2008 to last one second longer

Many probably wish 2008 would just leave and be forgotten, but for those under 30 it'll mean an extra second drinking, whilst for the rest of us it'll be a nice extra second asleep* **.

* Or for those of a geeky bent, sat in front of our computers or radio-controlled clocks waiting for it to show 11:59:60.
** What will libertarians do?

Buy sterling! Possibly.

I've just returned from the first Christmas I have ever spent outside of England. It was the wrong year to pick, at least when one was in the Eurozone. Worse it was in Paris, which is never a cheap city, and at 1.02 euros/pound, which is the rate I got from M&S before I left, certain things were phenomenally expensive. Time Out descriped the Hotel de Crillon's set lunch 'remarkable value', but at 68 pounds, I decided against. It was more, however, the little things such as a cappuccino in bar at nearly 5 pounds(or for easier comparision in Starbucks 4.70 pounds), a takeaway sandwich at lunch a similar price etc. The only cheap thing remained wine, and then only just.

The obvious, and hardly original, conclusion is that sterling is undervalued. So I will attempt to continue my reasonably good record on currency speculation - at some point soon it'll be time to borrow euros* and buy sterling. Or if you are my eurozone reader, just buy sterling.

* Actually I don't really advocate this. When one reads the personal finance pages of newspapers nowadays they are full of rather complex ways to increase the return on your savings over standard deposit accounts by tiny amounts. People who live in the UK are 'overweight' sterling anyway, and so should probably be trying to diversify a bit (although now is not a good time).

More exchange rate confusion

This is a disappointing piece making the old comparisions - I'd say modestly fleshed out on this 'blog some time ago - about how exchange rate movements have altered the relative standing of the US, Eurozone and UK over the past four years. But we all know that when discussing dollar (or any other common currency) GDP you can talk about exchange rates, but when you start talking about 'living standards' you need to make a lot more explanations. This statement is clearly nonsense:

The Oxford Economics consultancy, which only a few months ago reported that Britain’s living standards had overtaken those in the United States,

It's disappointing because David Smith knows all of this more than just about anyone else around. And see post above.

The Audacity of Hope can beat the Realism of Awareness

GDP down 0.6%. Shops in record discounting. Blah blah!

As it's Christmas we need to accentuate the positive, even, or perhaps especially, with economic data. Take Iceland, where you might have read that new car sales were down 95% year-on-year in November. Put that way it sounds very gloomy, but instead look at it this way:

There were 74 people in Iceland who decided in November, after taking into account all of October's events, to spend their hard-earned cash on buying a new (imported) motor-car.

That's the spirit! Once you get into this mindset you can't stop. All year we've heard the horror stories of the US housing market, in particular the new build sector. Yes you cry, "in fact in November they were at the lowest rate since records began in 1959". Well that might be true. But think of it this way:

Having read all the economic news and forecasts for 2009, US builders and property developers decided in November that the country needed another 44,600 houses. Indeed so much were they required they started building them.

Any other positive news gratefully received.

Something missing

The Economist reminds us of Labour's 1983 manifesto:

SOCIALISM in Britain died in 1983. Its demise can be dated to that year’s Labour Party election manifesto, branded “the longest suicide note in history”. This document combined ideological purity (highlights included the creation of a planning ministry, withdrawal from the European Community, exchange controls to stop capital fleeing overseas and unilateral nuclear disarmament) with a lunatic disdain for what voters wanted.

'A planning ministry'? Sounds vaguely Heathite, hardly the stuff of nightmares. Whatever happened to laughing at the bit where it talked of taking the banks into public ownership?

Depression update

Best story so far. L&G have some computer model of the UK economy, and they put in all the variables and asked it to come up with the optimum interest rate to balance growth and inflation, and it returned a value of MINUS 1.25%.

One gets a vision of a large 1950s style mainframe computer with smoke coming out of it as it gave the answer.

Italy's virtues

Simon Hoggart, listing many things and:

brilliant motorways

Eh? France has brilliant motorways, to the point where to cross the border from Italy is always a joy. Italian motorways are narrow, windy [is this how you spell windy? It looks like windy?], littered with advertisements, poorly signed, and full of Italian drivers. They are, it is true, free, [update: in the comments James points out from his experience, and that reminds me of my own, and their website confirms this, that they actually aren't free at all] but if you want free motorways in Europe you are surely better off in Germany, or (for width, if you are not too concerned about the length, er...) the UK.

The Heff

He begins this piece by saying that you can tell things are worse here because sterling is taking an 'unique' hit (more or less, apparently) and then ends it by declaring the euro is finished.

And Lord Rumba of Rio? What's all that about?

The World of Tomorrow

This isn't bad as predictions go. I like the idea that this all-singing-and-dancing computer still needs punched cards though. And the lawnmower is nuclear-powered.

Tony Green, your country needs you

Another Fed rate cut, this time 75%, leaving rates at 0.25%. Things aren't looking good. I think we need Tony Green, of Bullseye (and a lot more) fame to calm things down. He could stand on top of the Statue of Liberty or in Shoreditch and shout down a big microphone to Wall Street/the City/me: take your time, settle in now, no rush, keep calm.

Where's Farndale's "I pray for a housing crash" piece?

Slightly strange thing at telegraph.co.uk. Nigel Farndale's classic whinge about he hadn't made enough money from the housing market and now wanted others to lose out so he could make more, which I noted here, seems to have been removed.

ps Oh dear just realised my credit-crunch black & white blog applies to hyperlinks. They're on here and removed in the last sentence.

Old money

Today the pound is at 1.1238, or at least that was the low today. In old money that is:

7.4 francs
2.21 DMs
2,184 lira

Things that make me go I'm-slightly-nervous

The Economist says it's time to buy shares:

Risky assets look more attractive now than they have in ages. Corporate-bond spreads are sufficient to compensate for the kind of default levels seen in the Depression.

World GDPs

There was quite a famous article back in the mid-1990s by Nico Colchester, of the the Economist, which explained the world economy in terms of Italys:

Think of the world economy as 26 Italys. Italy is a convenient unit of account because the size of its economy, give or take the Mafia, is $1,000bn a year of demand. One trillion dollars means nothing to anyone except Bill Gates. But an Italy can be imagined. North America is eight of those Italys [MJT - I had to include Mexico to get near this]. Western Europe is another eight. Japan is five Italys. That already makes 21.

Of the rest, the whole of east Asia, including China and the dragons, is two Italys. Latin America is one and a half. The economy of the entire former Soviet empire is just half an Italy which puts Russian super-power into perspective. The economy of the 1bn people of the Indian subcontinent amounts to spending of one third of an Italy.

In the past 12 years things have changed somewhat, and the standard, Italy, wasn't much of one. But it's also the case that many things are the same. If Colchester were alive today he would write of 2008:

Think of the world economy as 26 Italys. Italy is a convenient unit of account because the size of its economy, give or take the Mafia, is $2,400bn a year of demand. Two point four trillion dollars means nothing to anyone except Bill Gates. But an Italy can be imagined. North America is SEVEN of those Italys. Western Europe is another eight. Japan is TWO Italys. That already makes SEVENTEEN.

Of the rest, the whole of east Asia, including China and the dragons, is THREE Italys. Latin America is one and a half. The economy of the entire former Soviet empire is just ONE Italy which puts Russian super-power into perspective. The economy of the 1bn people of the Indian subcontinent amounts to spending of TWO-THIRDs of an Italy.

The biggest change then is actually Japan (and Russia) which is reallly to do with exchange rate movements in the mid-1990s than economic growth rates, although they were of course poor for Japan since 1995. China, hidden in China and tigers, has risen from about 0.7 Italys to about 2.4.

Similarly the currrency movements of the last few months mean 2009 is likely to be quite different even though GDP growth is quite similar (bad in most cases). Time for a table, with a bit more accuracy.



The UK? Well that's now an Italy, as it was in 1995.

Il sorpasso or not

Apparently due to the falling pound the UK will have a smaller economy than Italy in 2009 (and France) so say the CEBR. This is not a well written article, I'm afraid to say, as it doesn't make clear the rather artificial nature of currency-movements in judging economic size. Because it doesn't make this clear, the last paragraph will seem rather odd to many readers:

Richard Snook, one of the authors of the report, said: "The UK economy is likely to be the hardest hit by the credit crunch due to its reliance on consumer borrowing and the financial sector for growth. We see the economy taking four-and-a-half years to return to the peak in the second quarter of 2008. Only the Italian economy, which is beset by structural weaknesses, is set to do worse."

Only the Italian economy will do worse? Eh? I thought it was doing better.

Using market exchange rates, with all their limitations, suggests the CEBR figures are in the right ballpark. I dont have them but using the latest World Economic Outlook as a guide (whose 2008 figures agree with CEBR's quoted in the article), and assuming zero inflation and negative 1% growth in each country, Italy will have a GDP of 1,586bn euro, and the UK 1,437bn sterling. To make Italy overtake the UK requires a euro/sterling rate of worse (for sterling) than 1.103. If the UK grows slightly more (or has higher inflation) it will be even worse for sterling.

The end game?

A friend of mine found £50 in the street yesterday. Another separately found £20 in a pub last week.

Good luck? Or start of a new and desperate attempt to reflate the economy by the government, taking the form of simply printing money and leaving it in places where it'll be found?

This I suppose is one way in which one can get more bang for your buck. People might save tax cuts or government giveaways if they believe it means extra taxation down the line. But not if they don't realise it's from the government...

Cutbacks

Due to the impending Great Depression 2.0 (if it's Greater than the Great Depression do we need to rename the original?) I have had to make some cutbacks at this website, and the first is colour. It's just a luxury we can't afford.

Interest rates at 2% - why?

I don't understand the argument for not cutting rates to zero in order to keep something in reserve. I suppose it is a psychological one, in that the very act of cutting rates is meant to boost confidence, and if you can no longer do that things will decline further.

Thus...the obvious thing to do is to raise rates to about 15%, which will indeed be a psychological blow, but give 15 occasions on which rates can be cut by 1%.

Peston: out of touch

Robert Peston, today:

Let's say Mr and Mrs Slightly-Stretched have a £400,000 mortgage, which is the biggest mortgage allowed under the government's new bailout scheme.


Update: Actually I've changed my mind and think joking about it makes more sense than moping around. So Peston is forgiven.

Gulp!

0.54 euros to a pound declares the FT!

Sterling lost ground, falling 1.8 per cent to $1.5086 against the dollar and losing 1.6 per cent to £1.8385 against the euro.

Damian Green

His arrest, whilst hilarious, is almost certainly wrong. It's worth noting that he can no longer enter the United States without a visa, an unfortunate state of affairs but one that I am sure he whole heartedly approves of.

Tax bombshell? Tax reality...

Just one day after the pre-Budget report the girlfriend received her pay slip, and has been charged £2,000 more income tax in a month. If this is repeated across the country then the government will raise about £80bn in November alone*! That should ensure no PSBR, although I can't see how it help hard-pressed retailers.

* The alternative theory is that she is being made liable for the country's entire national debt. This seems unfair.

Indian shootings

Blimey, on this day last year I had just checked out of the Taj Mahal hotel, Mumbai.

I agree with Nick Cohen!

As he says, an obvious way to save money for the government at this time is by scrapping ID cards. I think it was Keynes who suggested that printing bank notes, putting them in bottles and burying them in the ground, would be better than nothing in getting out of a recession. But even compared to that the ID cards scheme is pretty useless. Other obvious candidates are scrapping Trident (as Edward Pearce,who I'm sure used to be a Tory, says in today's Guardian) and those two aircraft carriers, neither of which we'll ever be able to afford actually sailing anywhere.

Really?

Andrew Porter, the Political Editor of the Telegraph, says:

As a proportion of GDP, this is the highest level of government debt ever recorded - even more than Britain ran up in the wake of the Second World War.

I thought government debt as a % of GDP was about 250% just after the second world war?

Churchill and Australia

It looks an interesting book and one to buy if they ever translate it and turn it the right-way up for us here in England. The Guardian article* is perhaps more harsh on Churchill than the book, which Paul Keating gives rather a good speech about here.

* There are some good comments. One noting that if the Australians didn't like him, there were people in other Empire countries that thought even less. But my favourite is 'Did FDR go to Hiroshima?'. That's either clever or stupid, but I can't tell which.

So proud

This blog is the second google result for the search naked pensioners

Currency speculation update

I am being beseiged with requests to update you on how the currency speculation is going. My loyal readers will remember that this took the form of investing in a Citibank dollar account when the exchange rate with sterling was higher than 2. On average the exchange rate I received was 2.01 to the pound. Today it is about 1.48, which means a gain of about 36%.

That's not bad although it doesn't compare to my one very successful investment of the last four years which was the short oil ETF, which is up something like 150% in about four months. Both however might have involved rather an unacceptable amount of risk - the short oil ETF was suspended for a while whilst it seemed owners of it might just become another unsecured creditor of AIG, whilst it seems Citibank itself is rather teetering, and as a foreign bank account owner I am not sure what the regulations are.

ps After this week's further collapse, sterling's euro exchange rate in terms of the old DM is now around 2.26, just off the (1993? 1994?) low of about 2.20. This is just 7.6 francs to the pound - to get 10 you need 1.52 euros to a pound.

Melanie Phillips is still with the Spectator

She is travelling. Thanks to one of my commenters, btw, for showing us this article earlier this year in the Jewish Chronicle. Read it all, but the paragraph linked to:

For the overwhelmingly Democrat-supporting American Jews, voting for a Republican is as unthinkable as eating a ham sandwich on Yom Kippur. Indeed, a number of them would rather eat a ham sandwich on Yom Kippur, because their conviction that religion is bunk and has nothing to do with being Jewish comes second only to their conviction that Republicans are the acme of evil.

is particularly astounding. She is talking hear about 77% of American Jews, who apparently are 'fools' and aren't particularly 'in tune with authentic Jewish ethics such as truth, justice and the difference between right and wrong').

Whole Foods Market

A couple of years ago a Whole Foods landed at the end of my street like a spaceship full of Moonies. I just woke up one morning and there it was. You have to bear in mind that, in Camden Town, we'd only ever had the sort of corner shops where you have to fight through waist-high crowds of shoplifting Ewoks to choose between a single packet of out-of-date trail mix and a pack of pre-holed beige tights.

That's strange, I was under the impression that Whole Foods Market in Camden Town was a branch of the not particularly different Fresh & Wild for years before that.

Has Melanie Phillips been sacked?

Two hours and 20 minutes to go. If Melanie Phillips doesn't make a blog post in this time then that's the first time in two months that she has gone two whole week days without blogging for the Spectator. Is this the start of that magazine's fightback?

UK growth prospects

I find it rather strange that the press, in particularly the Tory press, hasn't made more the IMF's truly awful economic outlook for the UK updated yesterday. The Fund now predicts UK growth will slump to negative 1.3% in 2009, from its previous forecast of negative 0.1%. This is mainly, however, due to the collapse in 2008 growth, Q4 to Q4 GDP change in 2009 will be negative 0.5%, better than 2008's Q4 to Q4 change of 0.9%.

It might possibly be related to the collapse in George Osborne's popularity, at least measured in certain ways.

Catchy headline

The Telegraph greets Obama's election with this headline:

Barack Obama benefits from changing make-up of American voters

Can anyone make any sense of this?

Those who have for the past eight years worked to bring down the America that defends and protects life and liberty are today ecstatic. They have stormed the very citadel on Pennsylvania Avenue itself.

Melanie Phillips, obviously. Presumably she is accusing Obama of treason, and believes he should be arrested. I don't know whether she has just realised that no-one is listening to her, and so is assured that nothing she says has consequences, or is simply no longer able to understand what she is saying herself. Her friends, of whom I believe one occasionally reads these pages, really need to say something and quickly.

US election

On Betfair at 13:05 I can place $1,000 on Mccain to win at 12.5 to 1. On Intrade I can sell him at 11.0.

So if we sell $1,375 of McCain on Intrade and buy $1,000 of Mccain on betfair, do I work it out correctly that:

If McCain wins we get $12,500 on betfair, and lose 1,375/11 * 1000, which is 12,500 on Intrade. So we break even.

If Obama wins we lose $1,000 on betfair, but make $1,375 on Intrade.

I suppose there are costs, which presumably could be paid for by reducing our Intrade bet a bit. And maybe the combined impact of credit risk and not having read the contract might make up the rest. Or have I just got my numbers wrong?

I have no money so this is theoretical only.

ps One problem might be if you can't bet in dollars on Betfair.

The Spectator

At first I thought Clive Davis was playing a game with someone in which the objective was to see what was the maddest conspiracy theory they could get Melanie Phillips to print. But now I think in fact he's doing it as a last gasp stand on behalf of the reputation of the Spectator, in that by publicly stating how absurd it is he is warning Melanie Phillips off repeating it. I think he might be too late.

Howard bribe

What a bizarre story, presumably completely untrue.

Welsh

This is a brilliant story.

Olympics

I was trying to be more optimistic about the Olympics, and I expect some of these figures are wrong - as far as I know more of the money is being used for regeneration than he allows, plus things that 'obviously' save money in practice often don't - but it's hard not to agree with Simon Jenkin's overall argument. It's a bit of a shame, because I remember one reason for getting the games was that when we last hosted it we were broke. But there's really no reason for building stadiums when we have them for things that won't last past the games.

Obama's endorsements

The daily deluge of unlikely figures endorsing Obama - Ken Adelman is the latest - is clearly less a sudden change of heart when confronted by the brilliance of Obama's campaign, and more whatever the opposite of 'rats leaving a sinking ship is'. Well I suppose it is rats leaving a sinking ship as well.

Btw, presumably if Obama wins the dollar is going to soar. I will update you on my dollar portfolio then.

George Osborne

A funny affair, I think what it reminds me of most is Ted Francis and Jeffrey Archer. It's amusing how many non-Conservative party supporters are getting worked up about the unfairness of it all, though.

It's a collection of European football scores from the 1950s!

In tonight's Champions League.

Cap in hand

In the British media, no-one has ever gone cap-in-hand for anything except Dennis Healey in 1976 to the IMF (who is never described as going in any other way). Until now, that is, when Gordon of Harry's Place says:

Norway [has gone] cap in hand to the US Federal Reserve for a £2.9 billion lifeline

The mind boggles. Norway, with a sovereign wealth fund with hundreds of billions of dollars, fuelled by enormous oil revenues, is broke, and reliant on begging for just $5bn in order to stay alive?

A google search suggests Gordon has essentially just lifted it from this Times editorial which says:

Norway has gone cap in hand to the US Federal Reserve for a $5 billion (£2.9 billion) lifeline

and in turn the newspaper's leader writer (I think we can safely say in this instance not Oliver Kamm) has taken it from this story in the Sunday Times, where Jenny Hjul declares that Iceland was reduced to 'begging' for this lifeline:

Norway has had to beg the US Federal Reserve for a $5 billion (£2.9 billion) lifeline

Poor Norway. Here's the Norwegian take on this, which is that the central bank there has arranged a $5bn dollar swap facility with the Federal Reserve. This is similar then to those arranged by the UK ($40bn), Australia ($10bn), Sweden ($10bn), Japan ($60bn), the ECB ($110bn), Switzerland ($27bn) and Canada ($10bn), although for some reason one assumes these countries did not go cap-in-hand and were not made to beg.

Me at MC Dockers party

Me at MC Dockers party
Originally uploaded by mjtphotos

Only one house sold a week in UK

Declares the Times. Bizarrely. I know things are bad, but it's not that bad.

Spoken word artistry

Coming soon, a photo of your genial host dressed as an elephant at a circus-themed fancy dress party. That was to launch this book, by "spoken word artist" (poet to you and me) and daughter of a friend, Laura Dockrill. The perfect Christmas present for friends and family.

Dividends and pensions

This is one of the most confused articles I have ever read. I can only imagine from reading this that the author believes windmills cause wind, or umbrellas rain.

Constitutional Clubs

My neighbour has opened a brand new cinema and community venue, the Pinkham Lighthouse, here in Kensal Rise, which I urge anyone nearby to frequent.

My reason for this post, however, is to ask if anyone can explain what a 'Constitutional Club' is, as that is where the cinema is based. A google search is not very helpful, except to suggest is simply a Conservative club. But why are they named Constitutional and not Conservative?

Pull down South London and start again

Is Keynes as relevant now as he was then? I suppose there are some parts worth saving, I always liked the Trinity Arms in Brixton.

“There are today many wellwishers of their country who believe that the most useful thing which they and their neighbours can do to mend the situation is to save more than usual ... Now in certain circumstances all this would be right, but in present circumstances it is quite wrong. Suppose we were to stop spending our incomes altogether and were to save the lot. Why, everyone would be out of work. And before long we would have no incomes to spend ... Now is the time for municipalities to be busy and act with all kinds of sensible improvements ... I read a few days ago of a proposal to drive a great new road, a broad boulevard, parallel to the Strand, on the south side of the Thames, as a new thoroughfare joining Westminster to the City ... But I would like to see something bigger still. For example, why not pull down the whole of south London from Westminster to Greenwich, and make a good job of it ... at the same time providing hundreds of acres of squares and avenues, parks and public spaces ... Is it better that men should stand idle and miserable drawing the dole?” From a radio talk by J.M. Keynes, January 14 1931 (reprinted in Essays in Persuasion).

via Samuel Brittan's FT column today.

But not the smartest

Lloyds TSB, of which I am a shareholder, have a major advertising campaign in The Metro today with the strapline:

Say hello to the world's smallest bank.

Well good luck to them, but it's going to be a tough one to pull off in the current climate. The takeover of HBOS might help.

Creative statistics

Fraser Nelson we've come across before, claiming that New Orleans was richer than London on the basis of confusing household and per capita income. Here's another classic:

Official figures provided to The Spectator show that there were 5.1 million people on out-of-work benefits when Labour took office. As of last February, that figure had fallen by just 867,000 — not much to show for what Mr Brown likes to describe as the longest period of uninterrupted economic growth in a century. In a decade, he made less progress than the Thatcher government did between 1987 and 1990, when the comparable jobless count fell by 895,000.

Bloggers go global

In Asia. Reading the Japan Times I see an Op-Ed by Oliver Kamm on Gordon Brown* ** Switching on either CNN Asia or BBC World (I forget which) I see he is going to be on at 6pm discussing the international banking crisis.


* In which Oliver claims Gordon Brown is directly responsible for high inflation because he should have taken steps to limit credit expansion, which I think is a turnaround for Oliver in that he is cricising central bank independence.
** By the way I think the NYT (from which it was syndicated) makes an error in calling the Labour Party the Labor Party, for that is not its name, and furthermore this would cause problems when discussing the Australian Labor Party.

UPDATE And now the Sunday edition of a Japanese paper has six pages from the Times, back in broadsheet form, with an editorial about Blair's resignation and how the London Mayor should choose the Police Commissioner. I understood the problem with this was that the Met has many national responsibilities as well as London ones, but maybe this can be got around.

Top Tip

Don't confuse nail varnish remover and face wash. It's very painful.

Shouldn't it be in CAPS?

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

From here.

Absolutely unmissable

I suggest everyone reads this.

Bush claims to be British!

From the BBC's Peston's Picks

For us here in the UK the big question is whether what Paulson's proposing makes it more or less likely that our government will have to launch a similar rescue scheme for our banks
President Bush

Thecreditcrunch

If I can work out how to upload pictures to the web from a 2003 mobile phone, I'll bring you a picture of the Walsall Obsever, which has the best creditcrunchery yet, something like

"Credit crunch forces pets onto the street".

[update, I've found a weblink!)

On the creditcrunch, I remember that old phrase, something like 'everyone is a conservative on things that they know a lot about'. Hank Paulson must know nothing about investment banking if that's the case.

British experts, on the other hand, have of course distinguished themselves since Northern Rock was nationalised. When Bear Stearns was bought by JP Morgan we were told that thank God the US authorities realised the folly of nationalisation and found a quick private sector solution, unlike Gordon Brown and the Labour government. When Fannie and Freddie was nationalised we were told that thank God the US authorities were prepared to put practice before theory and found a quick public sector solution, unlike Gordon Brown and the Labour government. When Lehman Bros were allowed to go bust we were told that thank God the US authorities were prepared to restablish moral hazard, unlike Gordon Brown and the Labour governmen, and when AIG was bailed out to the tune of $85bn we were told thank God the US authorities had put public money up in the defence of the financial system, unlike Gordon Brown and the Labour government.

This kind of know-nothing financial market commentary [as an aside, you can really tell someone who knows absolute nothing about financial markets by when they conjure up liquid financial markets out of their arse, and the speciality of this is 'shorting', which if you believe some of the more ludicrous bloggers is a practice one can do in any market, at any time, in any quantity*] comes to a head in the ravings of Ukip members, for whom nothing, even if it happened in the early 1990s, is not the fault of the euro.

* Thinking some more, it's that they never realise that a transaction requires two parties. I can't short HBOS if no-one wants to go long it. It's as if they've read so much about the private sector they've never actually had the time (or inclination) to be part of it, and I suppose really it makes sense as think tanks are quasi-public bodies, particularly in the sense that a very rich man (the governmemnt) hands money over and you never need to actually sell anything.

That was quick

The giant particle thingy starts up in Cern...

...and a £3bn "black hole" appears on the London Underground.

One always wondered how the Northern Line originated, and now we know.

Nationalisation

"Now will Brown save our housing market" screams the front page of the Daily Mail. Broadly speaking they seem to be calling for the nationalisation of half the mortgage market.

A little busy at the moment but if I have time I want to do a post on what seems to me to be the soft bigotry of low expectations (possibly related to anti-Americanism) that a lot of the anti-liberals have with respect to Sarah Palin.

Uk car sales worst August since 1966

Says this article. The figues are very poor, 63,225, down 18.6% year-on-year. But the SMMT's "lowest since 1966" is surely misleading. August is a weak month nowadays because the new number plates come into force in September and so people wait until then. Until 1999 however the new number plates came into force on August 1st, and only once a year (compared to twice nowadays) so August sales were huge, sometimes nearly a quarter of all new cars sold. Conversely July sales were very weak, e.g. 37,896 units in July 1998 compared with 505,308 in August 1998.

So this is the worst August since 1999 is the correct claim and a sub-claim could be it's probably the worst December 1999 on a seasonally-adjusted basis and the worst August since about 1996. Perhaps the SMMT do seasonally-adjusted figures (I did the above calculations myself) but I can't find any.

Sterling at $1.77

How you all laughed at my currency speculation. But now, my dollar at average rate of about 2.01 are looking good now sterling is at 1.76.

I don't think Alistair Darling has a high reputation as a Chancellor (although I can't really think of anything disastrous he has done), and for that reason this idea hasn't been considered. But when everyone is wondering why he was so candid about Britain's economic outlook, no-one seems to have considered that perhaps it was because he was talking down the pound deliberately?

The 2012 Olympic martyrs

It's not actually an Olympic sport, which is shame as Britain is not short of martyrs, but this couple are willing to risk jail to not pay the surcharge involved in paying the Olympics.

This appears a similar case to the first episode of Ever Decreasing Circles. In that Martin, played by Richard Briers, ended up complaining about a lorry parked in the close and it ends up in court and he faces jail for not paying a fine, but caved in when it was pointed out to him that if he went to jail he would still have to pay his fine. Obviously the episode ends with Paul saying that he had a mate on the Council who has sorted it out. I am probably mixing up about ten episodes here.

Anyway I fear the Glenisters protest is misguided. We all pay taxes for things we do not want to, and even when we will not be alive to see them. One can't start picking and choosing like this. It would be nice if they find out that the Olympic bid was illegal, and cannot be funded, and therefore the Games have to be cancelled. But I can't see it.

"furious bloggers"

On any subject you will find 'furious bloggers', so I'm not sure it adds anything to the story.

The Things Daily Mail Readers Say!

My neighbour's eight-year-old has built a pretend amusement park in her garden. She's just told her friends that one ride has been closed for health and safety reasons.

A.C, Ramsgate, Kent

Ryanair and oxygen

The obvious joke here is that with Ryanair's oxygen masks you probably have to pay a supplment to access the oxygen. However:

Mr Hadow described today how "well over 80 per cent of people on that flight knew they were going to die"

"Thought", surely?

Crime maps

The Metropolitan Police have launched a crime mapping service, which allows you to see how much crime is in your area down to something like ward level, and how it compares to regional and London-wide averages.

It's come in for some heavy criticism over here and here. The argument is that the map shows Primrose Hill crime to be below average, and yet the statistics show Camden Town with Primrose Hill to be above average, and so it is either "Sheer blithering incompetence or outright lies".

Well or a breakdown in logic. The map shows areas of Primrose Hill and areas of Camden Town separately. Camden Town is a high crime area, but (and depending on where you draw the boundaries) 1 ward in Primrose Hill is below average, 2 average (try searching for postcode NW1 8YB). This is consistent with Primrose Hill being collectively below average. There is a small area which about half is in Primrose Hill which is above average, but that still (and in fact does) mean the area is below average.

It's also worth nothing, for those who fear crime in London (and I have argued before that it is way too high and much more effort should be expended in fighting it) that the same blogger describes the streets of Primrose Hill as 'particularly mean', 'so scary', suffering 'rampant crime' and believes that only five other wards in London have higher crime. Anyone familiar with Primrose Hill will find that a reassuring statement about the level of crime in London as a whole.

Hurrah! Good customer service

My TomTom finally gave up the ghost (charging problem) and the company will fix it free of charge if I have the receipt. I don't...

...but Halfords, from whom we bought it online in 2006, replied to an email asking if they could send proof of purchase, within TWO hours on a bank holiday. I almost fainted.

Big houses

This story, of a women whose 'chocolate box' cottage has been surrouned on either side by two modern houses, interested me as the setup reminds me slightly of a similar thing I saw in Pett Level, nr Hastings, and also as I have just come back from the Hemingfords in Cambridgeshire, where there is a similar mania for knocking down old houses and building new ones. It seems to me the problem is not one of attractiveness - the cottage in the pictures is not a pretty one, and the houses that were knocked down in Pett Level were decidedly substandard, whilst the new ones usually have some merit - but the rather gargantuan scale. Perhaps huge houses are common in parts of Surrey but I was astounded in Hemingford just how large some of the new ones were. One in fact was just wrongly sized, with everything about 7/5ths too large. It was the scale that jarred rather than how they looked or their modernity (in fact most of the new ones are in a rather old-fashioned style). I think it's perhaps the same with these houses in the Mail article.

Mindless extrapolation?

According to the King's Fund, the healthcare thinktank, if the NHS continues to grow at its present rate it will account for one in every two pounds spent in Britain by 2046.

The things Daily Mail readers say!

Overheard on a 'plane.

The only thing wrong with the Daily Mail is that the print comes off on your hands. I think I'm going to start ironing it in future.

Well, hopefully not whilst on the 'plane.

Depression every where

I'm still talking about the weather.

Sterling at 1.85 to the dollar

But someone - i.e. ME - has lots at an average of 2.02.

How clever AM I?

HCAI
Originally uploaded by mjtphotos

Now in its 4th year, or maybe 5th, who knows? This handy ready reckoner allows you to work out what your A-Level results would be if you sat them today.

Some readers have raised the issue 'what if I didn't take any A-Levels'. This is indeed a problem with the scaling system. I say hand yourself a few Ds. Maybe next year we'll give you a C.

The Telegraph never lets you down

Here.


But hang ON! The BBC gives us a clue as to what is going on. The girl in the photo in this news story actually seems to be using her blonde hair to take the exam!

Thinktanks

I suggest this idea, to increase the population of Oxford and Cambridge to something like 2.5m each through an influx of Northerners (previously the preserve of Manchester Grammar School) is what you come up with when you've been told it's your job to come up with something eye-catching and haven't the faintest idea where to start.

I wonder what the prospects of a Conservative government implementing it are? They get panicky in Cambridgeshire when a new town of 10,000 people is suggested.

Update: Having read the report, I'm still not persuaded by its contents. I do agree we need faster commuter trains, and that the S.East around Hastings needs some motorways. But I'm not sure they've really allowed for the fact that things don't scale up as easily as they think. THe idea behind the political opposition is this: offering current residents money, i.e. you live in Guilford, you will be offered £15,000 per head to accept 10,000 new houses, paid for by the profits gained from building them. Time to invite 20 close friends to move in with you.

Olympic madness

Check out this Jeff Powell column in the sports section of the Daily Mail.

That Beijing ceremony was also terrifying….the next Olympics might represent the last stand for European culture…Communism in its various guises is preparing to take over…it is not the London 2012 organisers who sholud be afraid, it is the western world.

And apparently the Russian military is now equal to that of the US.

Wage negotiations at the Daily Mail

Must be quite interesting. Whereas most people get an annual cost of living increase equivalent to the RPI or CPI, so about 3-4% at present, Mail staff presumably can point out that the paper is convinced the true cost of living increase is about 25%.

The British weather

Well I didn't have an enjoyable Sunday. The route between Stella and Chablis is a narrow one, and I foundered on the rocks of Sparkling and Brandy. I was forced to drink because of the weather, which on Saturday was about the worst weather on an August day I can remember. Weathermen have an annoying habit of saying something like 'You may think this is a bad summer, but in fact its the sunniest since 2004' and of course last year we had those terrible floods. But it was actually cold on Saturday.

I always remember a friend, in criticising some friends of another friend, saying 'they're so boring they were even talking about the bleeding weather'. I'm now blogging about it. That's more impressive.

"Russia and Georgia on the brink of war"

Call Jimmy Carter! We really need Stephen Dennbest but I imagine the outcome will depend on whether the Federal Government intervenes. The Russians will presumably attempt a landing near Savannah, but that would be extremely difficult if the US Navy took part in the conflict. Maybe they'll just nuke them, but there's presumably a huge risk the fall out would hit Washington.

Update: Of course now they are at war, and it doesn't seem very funny at all. 1400 dead? Did the Georgian's completely underestimate the Russian response?

"why don't you concentrate on catching real criminals, rather than persecuting the Motorist?"

Bin Laden's driver jailed for 66 months.

Eva Braun was Hitler's girlfriend, not mistress

Watching a particularly good episode of The Thirties in Colour, where they have some fantastic Technicolor film of the world, and also of 1930s Germany and Poland, they showed Eva Braun's colour films.

And referred to her as his mistress. I can't remember if I blogged this before, as I know I meant to. Why do they always describe her thus? She was his girlfriend, partner, lover, etc, but not his mistress. Neither of them was married. I guess it's because he was meant to be 'married to the Reich'.

ps Comments from Tim and Peter have got me searching the Times archive. Eva was first mentioned on June 21st 1945. It 'throws some light on her position' and apparently she was known as 'EB'. She's then mentioned quite a few times - is she in Argentina, etc - -but the problem is by then she is referred to as 'his wife'. By 1953 one of her films is said to show Hitler as a 'man and a lover'. Off topic, in 1959 a Lubeck teacher declared that Anna [sic] Frank's diaries were a forgery. Finally in 1968 we get a mention of 'Eva Braun' as his mistress.

Batman and 12A

The Daily Mail is running a campaign, led by those stalwarts, Allison Pearson (How does she do it?) and Iain Duncan-Smith, to get Batman reclassified as a 15, rather than a 12A.

I have some sympathy because I believe all films should be classified 33, and for parents who don't like the idea of their 12,13 and 14yr olds seeing it. But aside from that it seems as if parental responsibility has gone out of the window. Suzanne Prinz tell sthe Mail she took her 7yr old son to see it and 'instantly regretted it'. Eh? The child is only 60% of the age that the classification recommends one can see it at. The official wording is a 12A is 'Suitable for 12 years and over.'

Oh dear oh dear

If this story is true I can only imagine it is a plot to make the country long for George Osborne.

Can anyone remember anything worthwhile Milburn has done? All can remember is he was given a role in th 2005 election campaign and did it so badly that Gordon Brown had to be called in to save the day.

Bring back Blair

A lot of people - well not that many - are demanding the return of Blair. When Blair left, of course, he was pretty unpopular, and so I'm not sure it will be enough to bring back just one Blair. Instead I say bring back a whole range of Blairs, one to everyone's taste.

Credit crunch watch

Does Private Eye have a credit-crunch watch, i.e. the most egregious use of the term. This article might be a candidate. It's also notable for its picture caption, which gets every single model's name wrong.

Dave's bike

I'm glad David Cameron has got his bike returned. When he was pacing up and down and demanding Sharia law, I had visions of him becoming London's version of The Batman, a mild-mannered Leader of the Opposition by day, and caped vigilante crusader by night.

Orwell's diaries online!

Here. Some excerpts:

Putney, December 12th, 1940
Cold. Wet. Tobacco in short supply. Spent day at home hoping that in 62 years' time UK will join USA in liberating Iraq and freeing its people.

Colchester, March 18th, 1942
Raining, dreary. Islamonazis everywhere trying to blow us up. Rory Bremner on the wireless, useless as ever.

Euston, October 4th, 1943
Took lunch in pub. Strange Irish feel but not threatening. Began writing a manifesto.

Lord Ashcroft to speak for the first time in two years

Isn't that remarkable? I once asked a friend to try not speaking for one minute, and she could't manage it. I wonder what his first words will be?

David Cameron is right!

It probably is time for a general election. I, for one, can't stand much of the newspapers being full of such speculation.

You'll get equal pay when you get off the beach

"Women shortchanged on pay" is common cry from groups like this, complaining the women's earnings are at a large discount to men's. Well it's not surprising is it when they spend so little time in the office? Article such as this, to be found in every tabloid newspaper today and tomorrow, are pretty damning evidence that groups of women tend to hang around beaches on work days. And it's the younger generation that seem particularly workshy. Note you don't seen any rapidly approaching middle-age men like myself in those pictures.

The Anthony Browne twins

Nick Cohen - he never changes, does he?

A few years back he attacked a man called Anthony Browne:

This line of cant has been developed by Anthony Browne, an occasional contributor to this paper, and a writer for the Times and Spectator, elite journals both. "Blair's epidemics" of Aids, TB and hepatitis B are being spread by asylum-seekers, he has asserted to great acclaim. You can understand the reasons for the applause. Browne has moved the debate on. Asylum-seekers are not only scroungers and terrorists but plague carriers, like the rats that brought the Black Death.

And ended the piece with a warning about what could happen if recession hit.

Today he declares his support - not in a shy way - for another Anthony Browne.

Browne has stood up for free speech and against liberal alliances with radical Islam, and exposed the civil servants who were pretending that a rise in HIV was due to poor sex education rather than immigration from African countries where the virus is raging. A former press officer at the Department of Health staff told me that his arguments caused consternation, not least because they were true.

And he ends the piece with a warning about what could happen if recession hit.

How spooky is that?

An unfortunate way to go

The comments are good too.

The Times today

No Oliver Kamm contest as I think it is too easy. But I actually bought The Times today so some links to some stories, good and bad.

Daniel Finkelstein makes the excellent point that the Right's constant criticism of crime statistics, refusal to believe it is falling (in most areas, not all) and reliance on 'common sense' is making them look a bit silly, and could be self-defeating. Of course to some extent it is simply an attempt, as on the economy, to talk things down for electoral gain and so things can be painted as worse when/if they takeover, which all parties in engage in when they can. His points echo those made earlier by Liam Murray over here.

This is a silly piece on Satellite Navigation (for some reason I hate the shortened sat-nav). Obviously it has its limitations, but there is no doubt it makes navigation, particularly when not on trunk routes, easier and also I'd say, safer.

On Zimbabwe, Jonathan Clayton argues that increasing sanctions is counter-productive. This is obviously a common view, and one that I imagine has some merit (the most effective policy is not always the most palatable) but seeing it in The Times is a bit surprising.

In the business section it is argued that McDonalds has finally conquered France - an odd assertion given its business there has for a long time been very successful.

And a strange letter. Measurements do seem to bring out some weird views, and this letter is illustrative (Jonathan Miles is informative).

Sir, We have had to suffer many changes being a member of the EU but the latest directive 80/181/EEC is, in appropriate farming terms, “the last straw”. I have a good idea of the size of an acre, having being told at school that a nearby public park was 15 acres. But 6.069 hectares doesn’t create the same mental picture.

Peter A. Rushforth
Cullingworth, W Yorks

So Mr Rushfort can mentally divide a park, which presumably isn't a perfect rectangle, into 15 bits and hence gauge the size of an acre, but he can't divide it into 6? I think he might think the park has actually changed size if you talk about it in hectares.

Royal banquets

I should have read on, but I had to look up apian. I thought possibility it meant ape-like.

Tory candidate quits

A rather unusual story over in Watford about a Tory election candidate who it is alleged (he has not been charged) has been criminally harassing his opponents. It'll be interesting to see his battle to clear his name.

IMF raises UK growth forecast

It now expects the UK economy to record growth of 1.8% in 2008, up from April's forecasst of 1.6%. It expects 2009 growth to be 1.7%, up from 1.6% in April. Q4 on Q4 growth, which might give a slightly better representation of the slowdown was 2.8% in 2007, and is forecast to fall to just 1.3% this year, then rebound to 2.2% in 2009.

Times leader competition

A. “We are all minorities now,” declared Jeremy Thorpe after the inconclusive general election of February 1974. The Liberal Democrats under Nick Clegg enjoy a poll rating comparable to that achieved by Mr Thorpe. At the time this figure was seen as a breakthrough. Now there is a sense that the Lib Dems remain stubbornly ensconced as a minority, while the other parties enjoy alternating large majorities. Mr Clegg's leadership is not regarded as providing a way out.

B. For her meeting with Janice Turner, of times2, Mrs Gül was a picture of cheerful optimism. Yet if the judiciary that regards itself as custodian of Turkish secularism has its way, she will not be First Lady for much longer. Despite the solid parliamentary majority that enabled her husband to become President, the country's Constitutional Court is determined to press ahead with a case intended to outlaw the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and ban its leading members from politics.

C. Yesterday was a day for bogeys and yips, not birdies and eagles. Phil Mickelson is the world No 2. So, in the absence of Tiger, he is the favourite on paper. But even he managed a triple bogey seven on the 6th, which is some sort of dystopic score for him and the Open. Nevertheless, it was understandable but wet of Sandy Lyle to chuck in his putter and walk in at the 10th. He had reason: “My hands were hurting from a few real skanky shots.” He was 11 over par after a string of bogeys. At the 8th his ball had bounced on top of his partner's, and ricocheted 30 yards through the green. And the 10th is a sharp dogleg to the left through a Himalaya of dunes.

Mmm, well we can rule out C, I think, as Oliver has never expressed any interest in any sport as far as I am aware. B or A? A might be considered too nice to the Lib Dems, whilst B uses the style times2, which I expect Oliver would have avoided if he could. I disagree with something in A, by the way (not in the excerpt there). The leader writer criticises the Lib Dem proposal to cut the number of MPs (of which I am only aware because he/she (or are they all hes?) mentions it) but this has always seemed to me the only proposal that would increase the power of the legislature vis-a-vis the executive, and indeed perhaps that is why the writer doesn't support it?

Will the last person to leave turn off the lights?

Good god no. Milburn?

Times leader comp

I've let you down...I forgot.

Here's

a) “Die, my dear doctor?” Palmerston asked on his deathbed. “That's the last thing I shall do.” Very shortly afterwards he did. At home, in his bed. In the 19th century most people did. Today most of us say that we, too, wish to die in our own beds, in familiar surroundings, warmed by the love of our families and by our memories.

b) A melancholy line was drawn under Israel's 2006 war with Lebanon yesterday when two black coffins were unloaded at a United Nations base on the Israeli-Lebanese border and the bodies of two kidnapped Israeli soldiers were returned to their homeland. In exchange for the remains of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, army reservists whose seizure by Hezbollah sparked the 34-day conflict in Lebanon, Israel released a terrorist serving a life sentence for the deaths of four Israelis as well as four other Lebanese prisoners.

c)The future doesn't look red for phone boxes, or even rosy. It looks black. BT has plans to remove 9,000 of them that have long since stopped making money. But the problem is not that people hardly use them any more for making phone calls. It is that neither BT nor its customers have bothered to think outside the box and reimagine them as strategically located, multi-purpose, public interest booths.

Good grief. Surely (c)?

Is it Right to be Anti-American?

I spent my summer holiday reading Tony Judt's book on post-war Europe. That's hardly a fanatically pro-USA tome, but it does make one pause, and wonder exactly what motivates people like Nick Cohen when they declare it is 'Right' to be Anti-American.

Times leader competition

1. Should women planning to have children expect to be assessed by prospective employers on exactly the same basis as candidates not planning to have children? Should women returning to their jobs after maternity leave expect the same pay and status as they had before? Should employers be penalised for discriminating against women in either case.

2. “Opening doors” was once the slogan of the US Federal National Mortgage Association, colloquially known as Fannie Mae. American taxpayers now face the displeasing irony of playing an involuntary role in keeping the doors open at Fannie Mae and its sibling, Freddie Mac (the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation).

3. They should, perhaps, have seen it coming. Christians have been speaking out in public ever since the Pentecostal gift of tongues demolished the language barrier and spread the good word around the world. And was it not from the aisles and pews of St Mary the Virgin in Putney beside the Thames that Cromwell and the Levellers went back and forth in 1647, ranting and praying, on universal suffrage, God's place in civil society and what should be done about the King?

Mmmm...tricky one. No.2 is the obvious choice because of the subject, but it doesn't quite seem right.

Tomorrow's Times

Congratulations to Oliver Kamm, who from tomorrow is going to write some of the leader columns in The Times. It's a far cry from where he began his 'old media' career, as the Noam Chomsky Affairs columnist on Frontpage magazine, and a vindication of the power of blogging, a subject I know he has been very forthright on.

This also allows us the chance of a game - 'Guess the Oliver Kamm leader'. I believe there are three a day on the Times, and I presume Oliver won't write all of them. So from Tuesday we'll have a go - if it's about Noam Chomsky we'll start on Wednesday. The prize, now Mick's album is on every Daily Mail reader's CD shelf, is a copy of John Lloyd's great work, 'What the Media is doing to our Politics'.

A message to potential Tory voters and homeowners!

Well actually to opinion poll respondents, but it's much the same thing. It seems to me that the 'hardworking families' of Great Britain have given themselves to the Conservative Party too easily. When things were looking less good for the Tories, they made large cuts in inheritance tax. This is not likely to benefit many households, but it was popular (partly I think because of confusion over the incidence of the tax). Even more popular, and with far greater benefits to far more households, would be the reintroduction of mortgage interest tax relief. This has been abolished entirely since 2000-01, and was at steadily reduced rates from about 1990 (and only on £30,000 of mortgage loans, a rate that itself was hardly changed from the 1970s; before then it was unlimited althogh slightly different in application).

Scaling that £30,000 up by house prices, we get about £90,000, so call it £100,000. At the current mortgage rate that is an interest bill of about £500/month. Tax relief on this at the lower rate would be something like £100/m and at the higher rate £200/month. Outstanding mortage debt is over £1tr, so if all of these got basic rate tax relief it would cost something like £12-15bn. Not all mortgage payers would be eligible, and of course a £100,000 cap would mean much lower figures - i.e. easily affordable for a Conservative opposition looking to make a splash, even if extended to higher-rate taxpayers.

But it's too late now - perhaps Gordon will consider it?

Holiday reading fact no.2

By the early 1960s, the private micro-farms that Kruschchev had sporadically encouraged in the Soviet Union and accounted for 3% of cultivated soil were yielding over 33% of the Soviet Union's agricultural output, and by 1965 2/3rd of the potatoes and 3/4 of the eggs.

Source: Same as below.

A Tory landslide

If the opinion polls remain as they are the Conservatives are likely to have a larger majority than Labour did in 1997. Most of the Conservative MPs will be very anti-European, and it seems possible, if still not likely, that the UK will leave the European Union. Which got me wondering - does out 'Citizenship of the European Union' automatially end if we were to leave, or could we have dual citizenship? The concept wasn't around when Greenland left, which is the only example of a country leaving (I think). The Wikipedia page is not that helpful in answering this question, and I imagine even if the UK government was happy the other countries wouldn't be. But as individuals do we have a say (of course the UK government could say they were incompatible, in which case presumably most people would renounce their EU citizenship).

Holiday reading fact no.1

In 1947, after war demobilisation but before the defence budget increases of the Korean war, the UK had:

A full naval fleet in the Atlantic, another in the Mediterranean and a third in the Indian ocean, together with a permanent 'China station'.
120 Royal Air Force squadrons worldwide.
Armies or part of armies in Hong Kong, Malaya, Persian Gulf, North Africa, Trieste, Austria, West Germany and the UK.

[in reply to which members of the H'S'JS might say 'and what has changed?']

Source: Post War by Tony Judt

That byelection

The BBC lists the candidates. Does anyone know who has the best policies on civil liberties?


* Grace Christine Astley - Independent
* David Laurence Bishop - Church of the Militant Elvis Party
* Ronnie Carroll - Make Politicians History
* Mad Cow-Girl - The Official Monster Raving Loony Party
* David Craig - Independent
* Herbert Winford Crossman - Independent
* Tess Culnane - National Front Britain for the British
* Thomas Faithful Darwood - Independent
* David Michael Davis - Conservative
* Tony Farnon - Independent
* Eamonn "Fitzy" Fitzpatrick - Independent
* Christopher Mark Foren - Independent
* Gemma Dawn Garrett - Miss Great Britain Party
* George Hargreaves - Christian Party
* Hamish Howitt - Freedom 4 Choice
* David Icke - No party listed
* John Nicholson - Independent
* Shan Oakes - Green Party
* David Pinder - The New Party
* Joanne Robinson - English Democrats: Putting England First
* Jill Saward - Independent
* Norman Scarth - Independent
* Walter Edward Sweeney - Independent
* Christopher John Talbot - Socialist Equality Party
* John Randle Upex - Independent
* Greg Wood - Independent

Texting main sign of 'extra martial' affair

declares the Telegraph. Sounds dangerous.

House market lunacy

The six-bedroom home on the market for £1.9m that was worth £3.2m three months ago

screams the Mail. But on reading the story you learn that some estate agent valued it at that price, and no-one wanted to buy it. It was 'badly overpriced' and no house on the street had ever sold for more than £2m.

UPDATE: This is house is no longer the London house that has 'fallen most in value' and any newspaper reporting it as such is wrong. I put on sale my two-bed garden flat in Kensal Rise last night for £10m, and there were no takers, so I have now reduced the price to £1m, a reduction of 90%.

The UK and oil

Why are UK poiticians so concerned about the price of oil? Britain is no longer an exporter of crude, but it is a tiny importer - 60,000 bpd according to the latest BP survey, which at $100/b equates to $6m a day, or about $2.2bn a year. So an increase of $50/b has only added $1.1bn to our import bill, which isn't much in the grand scheme of things.

His genes really were superior

Is the conclusion I draw from this Mail article, which shows what Adolf Hitler would look like today. Not bad for someone aged 119, in fact he looks much like he did when he was 56.

The rich

Felix Salmon makes some good points about the rich v non-rich, something we've discussed here (in response to Nick Cohen's views) before. One should be careful about making too many direct comparisions with the US figures however, the exchange rate to conver should be more like 1.5 than 2, and there are taxation differences.

What Davis should do

There are various non-Conservative and anti-42 days people in favour of supporting David Davis's campaign in the forthcoming by-election, for example Conor Foley over at Liberal Conspiracy.

I think this is misplaced, for the simple reason that Davis is standing as the Conservative candidate, with the same policies, many of which are not particularly friendly to civil liberties, as he did in 2005. Supporting him there will buttress the anti-42 days argument within the Tory party, but at the cost of boosting those views of Davis which are not positive, and indeed on which Cameron seems the better choice, which is partly why he won and Davis didn't, and Davis is doing this.

It would be different if Davis were to resign from the Conservative Party and stand as an anti-42 days and pro-other civil liberties candidate, perhaps as leader of a new political party with that as its core message, and one which would invite other MPs to join them, much like the SDP.

That would show real courage and dedication, and I advise any supporters he has to urge that upon him.

David Davis - Stupid yet glorious, or just stupid?

It's difficult to know what to make of David Davis's decision to resign from the Commons only to stand again, and on the issue of civil liberties. The cause seems just, but the idea just plain bonkers. It would make sense if:

1. The Tories had voted for the 42-day measure and he was quitting the party and fighting as an independent, 'Bring back 28/14 days' [1].

or

2. If David Davis has changed his mind of these issues since he was elected in 2005, i.e. back then he had stood on a 'longer detention without trial for suspected terrorists' and now feels he has to seek a new mandate.

But neither of these apply. He seems to be saying it is an attack on Parliament itself, hence the talk about 'until yesterday' being proud of it, but if that was really the case then surely he should just quit, rather than stand again for exactly the same parliament?

So either's it's just a misguided way of making a good point, or there must be something else to it. There might be something in this story , but Davis has presumably has had other issues on his conscious in serving in David Cameron's cabinet, and he seemed happy enough and in any case he could have just resigned. Perhaps the aim is to show to Cameron that it is not an unpopular meaure.

Will it work? He can't lose, clearly (which rather undermines the above suggestion aspect) and I suppose it gets to make a nice contrast with Gordon Brown's not calling an election. But it might have been more dramatic to set hiself on fire on the Commons terrace, or at least quit the Conservative Party and stood as an independent.

[1] Did Davis support the 28 day extension? [2]

[Update] Actually I think I've worked it out. The idea is that Cameron cannot backtrack on his opposition to 42 days if he has 'Mr 28 days (but not 14)' on his backbenches. Maybe.

[2] Yes he did, and worse, he argued for it on the same grounds that Labour now argue for 42 days. This makes his whole position ludicrous in my view. I have no idea why 42 days destroys the Magna Carta, but 28 didn't. It's a stunt. The idea that David Davis wil protect your civil liberties is a fantasy. One might argue that's he changed his mind, but to me the issue is this - we can talk about and once every 4/5 years have a 1/40m say about it, but he had a 1/600 odd say and chose an extension - worse he argued in favour of it. The voters of wherever it is in Yorkshire should choose whoever else they get, unless he/she is even stranger which looks possible.
[Update2] The Telegraph suggets it is leadership positioning, which is really odd, as if there is a consituency in Britain that so prefers Davis to Cameron.

Urghh

I was given a free copy of GQ today - how many people still buy these magazines? Anyway if you were thinking of buying it, if it is still on sale, it has an alarming article about the 'Class of 2008' in British politics, from Gordon Brown down to Tom Bradby (someone at ITN), all photographed (unpleasantly closely) by David Bailey, and all dressed in designer suits. It does none of them any favours, as it looks like Bailey's instructions were 'look as smug as you can', but I guess they were probably embarassed - why did they agree to it? I can't find many examples of it on the internet, but here's Iain Dale, whose picture was one of the better ones.

St John's Wood Road

I've cycled down this road, which passes Lord's cricket ground, for five years now. Every year, about now, they've started digging up the section of road directly outside the Lord's entrance, closing one lane of traffic. I was beginning to wonder whether it was in fact an anti-terrorism tactic, givne Lord's entrance is quite exposed, but the New Zealand test was completed without any roadworks, so I abandoned that idea. Anyway yesterday I realised that they are back - EDF again, I think - with an absolutely enormous hole.

ps I should also add that when I did drive past there on the Sunday of the New Zealand test (I think) the crowd behaviour was pretty poor, with very drunk cricket fans delilberately blocking the road and abusing drivers etc.

Football finances

Interesting charts (scroll down for more) on relative financial measures of the European football leagues. I had no idea (bottom chart) the French league had such high wages until 2000/2001, matching the English premier league (if the chart is labelled correctly and that isn't actually Italy).

In terms of income, England's relatively high attendances and very high ticket prices means it receives far more income from matchday performances than any other league. It's worth also remembering that England has quite a bit smaller population than France, Italy and especially Germany; if you added the Scottish premier league (i.e Rangers and Celtic) in as well it would be far ahead.

For EJH...attendances in Italy and England

What do you want in 2055?

Most of these things we already have, and the readers of Modern Mechanix seem to have been better at guessing what was possible than a lot of futurologsts. I like the man who says he wants a decent raincoat, for when we are 'outside the roofed-over towns'. I think he's taking the mickey.

Some are rather scary - such as the machine that projects everyone's thoughts. But at least the 10 second 'ultrasonic shower' allowed the magazine's editors to get a naked women in. She then gets a slug of booze from an automatic booze dispenser.

Fuel protests and prices

I can't quite see the sense in allowing lorry drivers to block a large part of one of the major roads into London - and surely they are just using up more fuel? Maybe it's not illegal as long as they keep moving.

On the question of oil taxation, John Redwood was quoting some pressure group saying that the government has collected £505m in extra taxation because of the higher oil price in just six weeks - so perhaps (given it has been rising over that period) it is now getting more than £100 a week extra. However when you look into those figures the vast majority - I think £400m - comes from higher taxes on oil company profits, not directly on the motorist.

I can't see any point in the goverment lowering taxes on the oil companies. There is also a problem with lowering the duty on fuel. It might seem reasonable, as essentially those advocating a lowering or not raising of fuel duty imply, that the government should have a target price for oil, say something like £158/barrel, which translates to £1 a litre, at which it believes the price meets its environmental and economic objectives, and as such when the world price is far below that it raises taxes and when it is rising it lowers taxes (note the world price is about 43p a litre [1]). Yet there are at least two major problems with this. First, to a small extent given we are a net importer, and a larger extent if other countries followed this policy, it allows the oil exporting countries a free-ride, immune from the impact on demand of their raising prices. So they'll raise prices and all the money will flow out of the country. Second, it's not at all obvious that the UK governmet is a better judge of the oil price than the market, imperfect as it is, and that any taxation to cover environmental or political externalities of oil should not be on top of the market price, rather than contained within it.

Having said all of that, an increase in the fuel duty at the moment does seem politically a bad idea without some other measure. So what I would do is note that (assuming no declne in demand) a 2p per litre rise in fuel duty will raise the government something like £1.4m per day, or about £0.5bn in a year. This could be refunded to motorists by a reduction in the vehicle excise duty, or even a refund, of £100-£150 per vehicle, including commercial vehicles. Hence the environmental and geopolitical arguments in favour of higher oil taxation are maintained, but 'motorists' are not losers.


[1] There are some complicating factors such as the amount of petrol/gasoline you get from a barrel and various costs in refining and delivery.

The price of petrol and time

The petrol price has risen from 80p a litre at the start of 2005 to around 114p today. That's an increase of 42% in three and a half years. If the average driver does 12,000 miles a year, and his car does 35 mpg, that's an increase in his petrol bill from £1,234 to £1,758 (this doesn't allow for any decline in driving due to the higher price).

Now one simple way to cut fuel consumption is to slow down - from 40mph onwards every 20mph subtracts about 6-10mpg from your fuel consumption. So for a 60 mile journey on a motorway, doing it at 60 mph rather than 80 mph (I'm going to ignore the issues of the law and traffic) and assuming fuel consumption falls TO 35 mpg FROM 27 mpg will typically mean a petrol saving of £2.8 - what would cost £11.9 at 80 mph costs £9.1 at 60 mph in a typical car.

However it also takes longer - one hour rather than 45 mins. It's difficult to exactly know how people value their time in this situation, but essentially if you value your time at more than £11.2 an hour you are still better off driving quickly.

Of course there are a lot of other factors to consider.

McCain backs away from gas tax holiday plan

So suggests this Gerard Baker article which finds fault with Hillary Clinton for it and also Barack Obama's plans as well.

Well that's good news.

Primrose Hill and machine guns

I was wandering around Primrose Hill yesterday at lunchtime and walking down Fitzroy Road there's a rather unexciting flat which is guarded by two policemen with machine guns.

I presume it is something like where the Israeli ambassador lives, but it seemed a bit small.

The London Mayor

Well that was almost easy. As I scanned the ballot paper I saw the fascists, the man who apparently is in alliance with fascists, the one who looks like a fascist, and then the one who just might be a fascist. And then I saw it - it said "Vote Matt". The ballot paper was speaking to me. Here was my candidate.

He's a bit disappointing, however. You can't have much confidence in a man whose election literature has a more prominent picture of another party's politician than of the candidate and who apparently has already dropped out of the race. Oh, and apparently he's a Father4Justice. So a 2nd preference then.

For the London Assembly candidate I went with my traditional policy of voting for the candidate who lives closest to me. This was a Lib Dem.

ps Why in the 'about Matt O'Connor' section does he get a good write up from so many men's magazines such as Esquire and GQ? Does the F4J play well with their readers. But..."“Captain of Dad’s Army”, GQ Magazine, 2005" - is surely nonsense? The Captain of Dad's Army was Captain Mainwaring.

Blogging will be light to non-existent for the next month

...personal and professional commitments...need a break...got other things to prioritise...er yes I've bought Grand Theft Auto IV!

voting

Ken Livingstone may well lose to Boris Johnson next week. If he does, he should not blame Labour's national difficulties.

says the Guardian.

Now we only have polls to go on at the moment, and the polls are very erratic, partly this is because the 2nd preference votes are hard to estimate with any precision (as noted in the Economist this week) but even the 1st preferences are showing big differences.

But if we average them out, then it suggests Livingstone is performing better relative to the Labour Party than he did at the last election. Then he got 35.7% of the first preferences, when the opinion polls put Labour on 34.6%. This time he is polling an average of 40% when the opinion polls put Labour on 30.6%.

Of course the polls might be overstaing his share of the vote, although the above holds true even for the most pessimistic poll. And the London share of the vote for Labour might be higher than the national share of the vote, or more accurately might be higher relative to the rest of the UK share of the vote than it was back in 2001.

But if the polls are even nearly right, then Livinstone appears to be running about 10% above the Labour share, compared to 1% last time.

Old colour pics of Britain

From the Daily Mail - I'm not sure how new these are but they're good quality. Any idea where the London residential street with the house with the new looking conservatory is?

UPDATE: Letters page today tells us it is Grimston Avenue in FOLKESTONE.

Children kick-boxing

Not sure what to make of this, it looks like something Chris Morris would dream up.

Was World War II pointless?

asks Peter Hitchens. I was looking forward to this article when I saw the headline, but soon in he mentions Patrick Buchanan, and the heart sinks. Also I think there's some dodgy facts - Churchill's anti-semitic article (about which Hitchens expresses doubt) was to some extent dealt with here, and whilst it is true the Soviet Union did a lot of fighting in WWII, I don't think you can say the UK did 'most' of it compared with the USA.

Hitchens conclusion is that we fought the war against Germany, but Germany now dominates us through the EU, the Empire is gone, and the US has 'supplanted us forever'. This critique isn't that new, as wasn't it John Charmley's argument in 'End of Glory'? To some extent also it is slightly outdated, to the extent Germany ever 'dominated' the EU (with France, presumably) it does so less today, and the UK's relative economic strength vis-a-vis it is the highest since 1990.

But of course British's global power has been declining almost ever year since 1945, a process that has accelerated in the last decade. But that seems to me an inevitable consequence of having only 60m people in a world of more than 6bn, one which unless the Empire was maintained, was always going to be the case at some point. And the Empire was never going to be maintained - it was dying before World War II after all.

One lawn MOWED!

I think my lawn is about 9m by 3m, and yet I still find it absolute exhausting the first time its mowed after the winter.

Anyway at least it looks nice now in case Prince William pops by for a cup of tea, or 10 pints of Stella.

Residential care for the elderly

The enormous house price inflation the UK has witnessed since Labour took office has created large windfall gains for homeowners, gains which decline the more recently they purchased their house. The generation, then, that is likely to die in the next 20-30 years has been the biggest winner, and it seems Tory policy is to do anything to let them, or more accurately their children, keep hold of those gains. First we had plans for cuts in inheritance tax, at the expense of higher taxes elsewhere, and now we have suggestions of free (after a time limit) residential care for elderly people who can't look after themselves (and neither can/will their children).

I can see arguments in favour of this policy, but more against it. As normal it will mean higher taxes elsewhere, i.e. mainly on people aged 20-40 today. I would suggest a compromise in which the cost can be deferred until after death, and come in the form of a special inheritance tax (which otherwise won't be levied given the tax changes).

The 10p starting rate

Robert Chote, of the IFS, has a good article on what is going on. Basically its the policy that Labour have followed since 1997 - support for pensioners and households with children, at the expense (or at least without benefitting) single adults. There is of course a good case for this as Chote notes -pensioners and children have the least ability to do anything about their own income. But it perhaps doesn't feel like that if you are a poor to relatively poor single person.

Le Cafe Anglais

I went here for my birthday lunch today. It isn't my birthday, that was back in January. But we'd hadn't gone out then, and as we were sat in the restaurant I fancied a glass of champagne, so making someone else pay seemed intelligent.

It's a somewhat strange location, at the top of Whitely's shopping centre and (although it is enclosed) on the food level with the Cafe Rouges, and Yo Sushis. But it's nicely done out, looking a bit like an old-fashioned French bistro, and the Chef Rowley Leigh seems intent on making a nice atmosphere - he was either walking around chatting to the customers or drinking a large glass of red wine. The food was pretty good too - we had a lot of fish - kipper pate and mackarel teriyaki for starters, and fish pie and mackarel and rhubarb as mains. Anyway I'd probably recommend it, especially if there's a big group of you.

Gordon Brown in America

Time magazine has an article. This seems a good time to reflect on what was behind Nick Cohen's argument, "Why it is right to be Anti-American".

...


...Nope, I've read it again and I still don't agree with him that it is 'right' to be Anti-American.

The UK economy

I had a conversation on email with a UK journalist yesterday who said that although his newspaper editors knew that the stories they were putting out on the economy weren't particularly accurate, to be perfectly accurate wasn't newsworthy.

It's worth noting then that the IMF forecasts that the UK economy will be the fastest growing of the G7 in 2008. I have no idea whether the IMF will be right or not, but I certainly cannot offer a better forecast, and I am surprised so many people in the media believe they can. Unemployment fell in March, albeit by just 1,200, and so although it is clear there are bad times ahead, it is somewhat strange that the news media has decided we are already in an economic crisis. Reading the BBC website the other day I half expected to see some men from Jarrow marching past the dooar. I think it's basically to do with the fact that in the UK press - at least the national one - there is amost no distinction made between City news and economic news. Obviously what happens in the City is of enormous importance to the UK economy, but it is not the same thing.

Hurrah!

The beta of the new Daily Mail website is here. I think I should add - oh the irony - that generally the mail website probably isn't safe for work for those of you who have strict internet controls.

Private property unless it's a nice house

Classic Nimbyism here, or perhaps plain 'idiotarianism' (or more likely the pressure of overbloggin). Tim Worstall rants away in the Spectator blog about someone not being allowed to destroy their own property anymore, and it being the end of private property etc. Here he demands action to stop private property being demolish (there's a weak justification in the comments about light, which doesn't really seem to have any foundation). Nick Cohen wasn't fooled.

candidate

YouGov has been a tremendously successful company - just look at its share price. I'm sure there are many reasons for this, but one must be that its polls have been consistently accurate. I have no reason to believe this is not the case in the London Mayoral election - the latest shows Johnson 6% ahead with 45% to 39%.

It has been noted (by Adam Boulton) that their weighting for the over 55s was very strange. In their poll conducted between the 12-14 March, out of 1005, the poll was weighted so 382 represented the over 55s, which is 38%. The one on the 20-28 March had 1051 people, which was weighted to 408, which again is 38%.

Apparently this was an error, and YouGov then changed their weighting, so the 2nd-4th April poll had 1003 people, of which 281 were over 55, and the latest one, between 9th and 11th April, 1031 people, of which 290 were over 55. This is 28%.

Peter Kellner told Political Betting that the error made no real difference to the results, as other weighting factors (such as Party ID) compensated for it.

Fair enough. In other words it shows that the age weighting is only part of the weightings and doesn't do much on its own.

However another thing I noticed was that this error seems to have not only crept into the weighting, but the raw sample. Now YouGov's panel, who answer email questions, is not designed to be perfectly representative, and even if they ask a selection of people who are, they cannot guarantee those who reply will be. Nevertheless clearly it is helpful to get a reasonably similar age distribution in responses as you intend to weight to, as it means less statistical manipulation is required.

So looking again at the over 55s:

Respondents to YouGov Mayoral surveys who are over 55
2007
19/12 = 498/995

2008
19/02 = 517/1003
12/03 = 503/1005
20/03 = 557/1051
02/04 = 380/1003
09/04 = 335/1031

These are actually who replied to their survey. So for the first four London Mayoral polls, more than 50% (53% on the 20th March!) of respondents were over 55, not far off double London's real figure and much higher than even their wrong weighting they were aiming for (38%).

Now one can imagine that the near-retired and retired have more time to fill out the surveys, and this would explain why, since the weighting mistake has been pointed out, the no. of over 55s replying to surveys (or presumably who have been asked) has fallen quite sharply, but not back to 27%.

Nevertheless one has to wonder how much statistical manipulation has to be done to a poll when those surveyed are half over 55, when the proportion of the population (in London) is 27%. This again is not necessarily wrong - it is to some extent the way in which the company works. Yougov polls are not random samples, in which the idea is that it is going to be representative of the country, but instead (as far as I understand it) occasionally repeated samples of people of whom they know key characteristics, and therefore from that they can extrapolate about the opinions of others.

RICS survey

The Guardian doesn't report this very well. Yes, the survey shows that the no. of surveyors seeing falling prices exceeded the number who were seeing rising prices by the most since 1978. But that does not mean "house prices are falling at their fastest rate for 30 years'" - more information is required. The article should be balanced by the findings of the FT, Halifax, and Nationwide surveys, and an understanding of what the report means.

The weather

What nice weather.

The End of an Era

I imagine some of my readers are already sleeping outside a Camden newsagents to make sure they are first in line, but for those not so up to speed with modern music trends prepare yourselves for a momentous announcement:

Stars is considered by many to be Simply Red's finest album and next week The Mail on Sunday is giving it away absolutely free.

Don't believe me? Click here.

Obviously in one sense I am upset - no-one will enter my competitions any more.

[A big shout out to J.D for alerting me to this event of historical significance]