JOHN GUMMER IS STILL AN MP!

News just in. More details here.

The UK's 10 busiest and least busy stations

Back in 2005 we looked at these with data from 2004/2005 (and read comments for an explanation of how it is done), this has now been updated to 2007/2008. I expect methodologies have changed slightly as well and so the figures can't really be compared, but here they are. The raw data is available here.

London Waterloo	London	50,161,215
London Victoria	London	38,357,578
London Liverpool Street	London	29,024,930
London Bridge	London	26,993,824
London Charing Cross	London	19,383,274
London Euston	London	14,735,665
London Paddington	London	14,734,923
London Kings Cross	London	12,391,967
East Croydon	London	11,629,312
London Cannon Street	London	11,028,516
Crosskeys	Wales - Cymru	3
Llanhilleth	Wales - Cymru	4
Denton	North West	18
Dorking West	South East	18
Tees-Side Airport	North East	22
Reddish South	North West	22
Coombe Halt	South West	29
Doleham	South East	36
Buckenham	East	50
Barry Links	Scotland	69

Wine prices again

The Economist has an article on the British and Claret, and gives us this paragraph:

Sir Robert Walpole, Britain’s first prime minister, used navy ships to smuggle his favourite wines from France. The most expensive one he bought was old burgundy, but that—as now—was available only in tiny quantities. So he relied largely on claret, buying four hogsheads of 24 dozen bottles of Margaux and one hogshead of Lafite every three months. In a single year his wine bill amounted to over £1,200 (£100,000 today).

As Felix notes, assuming the Economist's conversion is correct this comes to about £17/bottle (24 * 12 * 4 * 5 = 5,760 bottles), yet to buy it today will set you back about £300/bottle. Interestingly £17/bottle is not that far off the £22/bottle (in today's money) that I found Berry Bros. & Rudd were selling Lafite for in 1909.

In fact if you take it back into money of the day, we have five shillings in Walpole's time (the early 1700s), six shillings in 1909, and 6020 shillings today.

London in 2010 from 1990

Over here.

tax freedom day

Ive not done detailed calculations but looking at a chart of tax as a percent of gdp I think tax freedom day will be earlier in 2010 than it has been in decades.

Tax Returns

I have to say the Inland Revenue's online tax return filing system is really quite impressive for a piece of government software - simple to use, robust, and easy to understand. I'd set aside a whole morning and it took 10 minutes!

[I'm in a good mood as they owe me tax]

US debt

I'm not too sure about this Liam Halligan argument (my bolding).

The dollar fell particularly sharply last week, though, as traders were reminded of the patently obvious – that the White House actually wants the dollar to fall. US Treasury officials have lately taken to staring into the TV cameras, puffing out their chests, then stating: "We are committed to a strong dollar." That's nonsense, of course, because a weaker currency boosts US exports and lowers the value of America's external debt.

Surely if you're debt is denominated in foreign currencies a weaker local currency increases the value of your debt in your own currency, and if it is denominated in your own currency (as is the case with almost all of the US's foreign debt) it makes no difference? I think perhaps he is thinking of inflation. I suppose it decreases that value for (say) the Japanese in yen terms, so perhaps they will care less about getting it repaid? Or is there something I've missed?

The pound in your pocket hasn't devalued

When Harold Wilson said something like that it was obviously a lie. I've commented a few times on the somewhat bizarre return of the 'devaluationists' in economic commentary, led by Ambrose Evans Pritchard, who I seems to believe that every country in the world can, and should, devalue at the same time.

But anyway, the point of this piece was I just bought four bottles of Champagne from the local off-licence for £40. So perhaps Wilson was right after all as its pretty good stuff.

update: Ooh, my head. Bloody Alistair Darling.

David Horowitz, of all people, emails me:

Is America losing its mind?

Letters of condolence

I don't really want to post on this as it's a pretty wretched subject, but I see now the newspaper in question has got the bereaved mother taping private conversations (a breach I believe of civil law if it's made public..) four of the top five coments on their own website are suggesting the story is dragging on to long.

It appears what they are after to show more respect is to get a secretary to type out the letters in future and borrow Donald Rumsfeld's signature machine.

The sloppiness of Henry Porter's research makes one despair of the Sunday Times

Here.

Are eurosceptics unrealistic in their expectations?

If Dan Hannan matures from his present rather aloof juvenile lead mode to be a plausible, and warm, leader then that might be possible in the next 10 years. 

Yes, I think they might be. 

Hannan

Do you think he has mistaken a 'referendum' for Clearasil? Isn't it really weird language to use?

"This Conservative is for a referendum: a proper, deep-cleansing referendum that will settle whether our country remains subordinate, or becomes self-governing".

Government and private imbalances

Martin Wolf makes the case (again, but I suppose he's hoping one day it will stick) that government deficits have been caused by private surpluses. Incidentally on this analysis you can see why Germany might have had a terrible jolt at the start of the economic crisis but one that hasn't been felt so much inside the country as you might think.

News and opinion

It's interesting to see that the Daily Telegraph has scrapped the idea that news should be unbiased and is now editorialising in news articles. I know newspapers always do this to some extent but it's still a bit surprising to see how far the D.T has gone. Headline today:

Lisbon Treaty: more of Britain's powers surrendered to Brussels

This is on the web version, Private Eye noted this week that the Daily Mail now has different headlines and (perhaps) story angles on its website than the print version - think this is a risky business.

Lisbon

The Lisbon Treaty has now been ratified by all signatories, and although it is not yet law it appears the Eurocrats have taken no time in imposing their will on our once proud country. Nosemonkey is liveblogging it, but highlights are:

The EU flag has been raised over the Houses of Parliament



Buckingham Palace has been nuked by a European Air Force



Winston Churchill's statue is - well it appears only to have been half done - being replaced by Jean Monnet's.

The EU = China 1989

This appears to be Daniel Hannan's latest point.

On the referendum (a bad idea although one I think the pro-treaty faction would win) I don't really understand the issue about Cameron breaking his 'cast-iron' guarantee of a referendum. He's been hinting that he wouldn't hold one if it had been ratified since the day he made the pledge. I think the worst that can be said was that he was too cowardly to admit explicitly that it was only if it hadn't already been ratified, and has avoided making a policy because of an eagerness that something might turn up. A ditherer, but that's no bad thing.

No €30 note

Jim Higgins, an Irish MEP, apparently wants one. And Jean-Claude Trichet is not budging. It's quite a nice brush off, although Reuters suggest he has overlooked Tunisia (although perhaps they don't have a 3 dinar note so it doesn't quite follow the pattern).

The question now is what purpose would a €30 euro note serve? It's true the 20 euro note doesn't buy you much.

The bleedin' weather

A quick weather update using my "weather station". Here is the average daily temperature in Kensal Rise, London since January. Unfortunately May is missing, that's the gap. The hottest single daywas the 30th June with a temperature average of 23.6 degrees centigrade (as are all temperatures quoted here). The coldest was 1st February at minus 2.2 degrees.

Taking the monthly average the coldest was January at just 4.1 degrees, then Feb at 5.7 degrees, March at 8.6 degrees, April at 12.2 degrees. Then June was the hottest month at 19.1 degrees, slightly warmer than July's 18.3 degrees and just August's 19.0 degrees. September tails off quite quickly to just 16.1 degrees and October is back down to April levels at 12.2 degrees.




Looking at individual days, the following charts shows the temperature every half hour through the day (from midnight) for October 26th (Monday), and the 26th of June, July, August and September. Of course in October the clocks had gone back so everything's been pushed forwards an hour. There's a slight problem with my weather station which really shows up here - the sun shines directly on it about 2pm. Hence on sunny days it can really raise the temperature - that I think is what is happening on 26th September given how cold it began and then picked up so rapidly.

The things the Mail says

The Daily Mail is actually referring to a 34yr old woman, who looks perfectly normal, as a 'Cameron Cutie'.

Italy and the UK

Relative economic size is one of the main topics around here, especially when measured using fluctuating market exchange rates. For example here, or here where I looked at the possibility of Italy overtaking the UK.

Well apparently according to George Osborne in the Evening Standard, that day has come (quoting this presumably). And it seems reasonable enough, given my post last December talked of it happening if the pound was worth less than 1.1 euros.

Yet one would be justified in being sceptical that the Italian economy really was larger than the UK economy. A visit to any continental European country (or look at Gap's price tags which show euro and sterling prices) makes you think the pound is probably undervalued against the euro.

In fact Italy's GDP in constant prices and local currency has performed almost identically to the UK's over the last year, so clearly we are talking about currency effects, not anything real going on. I've remarked before that one of the weird things about economic commentary in this recession has been a love of devaluation (Ambrose Evans Pritchard give the impression he believes ever country in the world can and should devalue at the same time). Well here's (one of) the drawbacks.

Carrier(s) to be scrapped?

The Guardian reports that the navy's two new aircraft carriers are to be downgraded to one lesser one and a floating helicopter storage pad as the cost overruns. If true, this is perhaps the least surprising bit of news in history. I note that the report says the cost has risen by £1bn above the original £3.9bn estimate. Yet surely this itself was a higher estimate than the original, which was more like £2.9bn [incidentally I think this choosing of 'original estimates' is the reason people say the original Trident was 'below budget'].

Pure evil

Well Question Time has just started and I can honestly say that's the most offensive thing I've seen on TV for a long time.

No way to run a country

I find some of the Conservatives' langauge rather unsettling. David Davies says "We should tear up the Human Rights Act" while Jeremy Hunt wants to "rip" up the BBC's charter. While I don't agree with Oliver Kamm's argument that New Labour had made Britain a "banana republic", it looks increasingly like the Tories will..

Mafia style messages

It's difficult to know what to make of this story (in the Times but the Times has close links to all these characters so probably accurate).

One assumes its simply a drunken joke that was regretted the second the send button was pressed. But doesn't it give you a slight sense of panic that these people might be in charge soon enough? Jamie had a piece on what we can expect and the general view was a lot of infighting, which this supports. However I think I agree with Justin's comment unless they have some huge European disaster.

Share trading

The FT, from Nomura, has this interesting table showing stock market capitalisation of the top 10 countries, and the turnover of those markets.



The actual report lists the top 30, and from that we can see that the US accounts for about one-third of the top 30 market capitalisation but more than 50% of total trading volume. No other market comes close on the market cap/turnover ratio, with Korea next.

Anyone know why volumes are so high?

EU politics

The Economist this week seems to argue both that the EU has become too powerful vis-a-vis national governments, and that it needs Tony Blair as President in order to give it clout on the world stage. But surely Tony Blair in giving it clout would have to ride over national government wishes?

Speechmaking

I've been away so probably a bit slow on the update but this is quite funny.

An elementary economics error

Australia raises rates from 49-year low
First G20 economy to tighten policy since crisis

screams the headline of the FT. Yet if anyone knows one thing about Australia it is that it is upside down. And so when they raise rates it is fact a loosening of policy, not a tightening, i.e. the same as if the ECB or BoE had lowered rates.

Referenda

I don't understand why people think it's wrong for governments to keep having referenda until they get the result they want. The idea behind a referendum is that a particular issue is so important you need to get the public's view, or if you are pushing a particular policy, their consent. If this is right thing to do once it's the right thing to do as many times as you want to do it. One has to assume people understand the question they are being asked, the implications for saying 'yes' or 'no', and if they were annoyed by being asked again they would vote accordingly. The critics seem to be saying: "Blimey, the general public are so stupid they can't see (unlike myself) that they are being manipulated" which is a strange position to take if you support the idea of referenda.

Care homes

Why is it such an 'injustice' that one has to sell one's house in order to live in a care home?

If only 1/5 people have to do this I can see why it is annoying. But maybe that's because they have lived longer.

I find it a little strange that houses have become so untouchable. Under current Tory plans no-one will have to sell their house to fund private residential care, then when you die the government won't take any of the money back in inheritance tax. This seems rather odd to say the least.

The specific plan seems a little weird too. If people can voluntarily pay £8,000 at age 65 and this is enough - given it's only 1 in 5 - to fund free residential care, then why aren't private insurers offering the service? It's not as if the government scheme works because of universality, as it's voluntary. From what I've seen it just seems an extension of government into an area which is unneeded (which is not necessarily true of a 100% service).

Hitler's skull

A bone fragment believed to be part of Adolf Hitler's skull has been revealed as being that of an unidentified woman...US scientists said DNA tests revealed it actually belonged to a woman aged between 20 and 40

Here. Of course there is an obvious other explanation [1] that Hitler (at death) was a woman aged between 20 and 40.

I realise at a stroke I have changed our view of history. I think also that given her known record in World War I she would have had to have been at the upper end of that age range, perhaps even 45. But otherwise it fits the facts.

Oh.


[1] No not Eva Braun, who by the way was Hitler's girlfriend, companion, common-law wife etc before coming his wife, not his mistress. I've mentioned that before.

Mate

David has just sent me another unwanted email, in which he refers to the Prime Minister twice as simply 'Gordon'. Isn't that a bit unusual? He also capitalises 'party', as in "if you want... a Party with guts", which I find a bit creepy.

Crossrail

Anyone any idea if Crossrail is 10%, 50%, 90% etc likely to get built? For reasons unknown K&C council have put in a late bid for a station quite near where I live. Apparently it took them that long to find somewhere in need of regeneration.

Mail readers, Chris Woodhead and Martin Bright

The comments to this Melanie Phillips piece in the Daily Mail are priceless Mail (warning not safe for work - Melanie Phillips & the Daily Mail in one link). Here is perhaps the most perfect, although the teacher who [blush] thinks he is a bit of hunk and talks of "idea's" runs a close second.

And WHO is to blame for all-of-this? ... Answer; The Noo-PC-Laboor-Party and the cancer of 'lefties' bred BY 'them' that's who! At the next election WIPE-OUT in its entirety, this cancerous plague once called 'The Labour Party', and THEN GO-AFTER every stinking 'leftie' in a McCarthyesque 'hunt'. Track them down, every last one of them. SACK THEM ALL and TAKE-ENGLAND-BACK for it's people, from this diseased-bunch.

- Tommy, Madrid, 23/9/2009 23:00

I recalled when reading Melanie's piece that her friend and, as she puts it, the only man in the education establishment whose views 'chimed with hers' - Chris Woodhead - had his own 'experiential and educative' relationship with a 'former' pupil (apparently Woodhead's recollection differs from other witnesses). I was trying to remember the details and - small world! - found this entertaining piece by Melanie's former Spectator colleague and now Jewish Chronicle colleague, Martin Bright.

Man U get more injury time if they're losing...or do they?

I salute the Guardian's effort here . But they really need to look at other teams and see if the same pattern holds. I can see why if Manchester United are losing at home and pressing hard there could be valid reasons for extra injury time - namely more injuries from fouls caused by desperate tackles from the opposition (also perhaps from offsides and time-wasting). If Manchester are winning then the other teams presumably will be attacking, but if they aren't as good (as is normally the case) then it will be perhaps with less effect (and so be easier to defend without fouls).

The only comparative data shows that other top teams get more injury time on average but it does not examine the time when winning/losing.

Becoming more normal

Things I have done for the first time this month:

* Watched an episode of Minder
* Had HP Sauce

Maradona

Apparently he owes the Italian tax authorities 37m from his eight years at Napoli. I don't know what the tax rate was then but I don't think it was more than 50%, which suggests he earned at least 74m euro in 8 years, or about 900,000 a year- 17k/week, say 13,000 pounds. I supppose that is about right for the very top of 1980s Italian football.

World's tallest man

Look he's almost as tall as Big Ben*!

* Yes, I know that's not its name.

Sealions and lottery predictions

Do you remember, perhaps even only five years ago, when the Daily Telegraph was a serious newspaper?

Where's Drake when you need him?

'Unprecedented' level of Portuguese-Man-of-War seen around Britain

Pointless human activity

When I was 18 I spent one Sunday afternoon being paid £7/hour (a lot in those days) to count the number of cars entering and exiting Waitrose's car park. Unfortunately Waitrose (back in those days) was closed on Sunday, and its car park locked up.

I thought it rather pointless. But compared with 'Editorial Intelligence's inaugural Comment Awards' it seems about as productive as D-Day. Yes, they really have:

Commentariat of the Year, sponsored by Jaguar Land Rover

I realise the sponsorhip probaly cost Jaguar Land Rover no more than £100. But still - weren't they asking for government help not so long ago?

House for Sale just off the 'hippest street in EUROPE'

Who wouldn't want to live just off the hippest street in Europe[1]?

If you do want to, then I'm offering my 2-bed flat for just £2m.

[1] Presumably the member of the Vogue staff who is trying to sell his/her house and hence has planted this absurd story.

Children outlive you

The Times has a story on MI5 surveillance of Sam Wanamaker and Michael Redgrave in which the opening paragraph tells us:

Britain’s security services planned to intern the father of the actress Zoë Wanamaker in the event of a national emergency because of his communist links.

Later we learn:

The Wanamaker brief also shows that Special Branch kept a file on Michael Redgrave, the actor father of Vanessa Redgrave,

I know the Times has been dumbing down for years now but surely its readers might be expected to have an idea who these people were without the immediate reference to celebrity offspring? Watch out for references to "The politician father of Cabinet Minister Hiliary Benn" or even "Reality show champion Carol Thatcher's mother".

War

World War II began for the British 70 years ago on Thursday. The Times' first words on its front page on 4th September 1939 were:

The CHARGE for ANNOUNCEMENT of BIRTHS, MARRIAGES, and DEATHS (authenticated by name and permanent address of the sender) is ONE GUINEA...

it then announced the birth to Ingrid Ashton, wife of Ben, a daughter. Who presumably was 70 yesterday. So happy birthday to her.

All the hotels advertising on p.2 seem aware of the situation - the Selsdon Park Hotel (later made famous by Ted Heath) notes that it has a gas proof air raid shelter under four floors of reinforced concrete. But also on that page we learn that the US leads in a Davis Cup tie.

A ha! Page three - we get "Britain's Fight to Save the World", in the parliamentary report.

But it's page four where things really get going - the Queen of Tonga assures us of her loyalty, the Poles say they never doubted Britain's commitment, and we get a reprint - from the London Gazette - of the declaration of war. The German reply is saved for p.7.

A bit with contemporary relevance tells us that all prisoners with less than 3 months to go of their sentence are to be released - except members of the IRA.

Housepricecrash.co.uk

It's a funny website. As far as I can see almost to a man they believe:

a) house prices are going to crash in nominal terms (much more than they have so far, as big as that is)
b) that inflation is massively (and perhaps deliberately) understated by the government

So in effect they must believe house prices have crashed in real terms already. And all of their valuation charts are wrong. For example once (not on that site I think) I read that Labour have underestimated inflation by 5% year for the last eight years. That's about 50%, so this chart really should show the line dropping to about the bottom of the 1990s crash.

Possibly the most heart-breaking story I have ever read

How the dream of running an olive oil farm in Italy fell sour. Even though people could 'adopt-an-olive-tree'. I wonder why more Italian smallscale farmers don't get the chance to say how difficult their jobs are in the Guardian?

Ted Kennedy dies

I was sat at my desk in Kensal Rise, checking the news on BBC online, about 7:25am.

How clever am I?

For disclaimers and history see here or here or here.

The interesting thing here is the rate of grade inflation/pupil improvement. This was 1.2% last year (the red line), the same pace as the previous year. Only in 2002 was it considerably higher, at a huge 8%, when a new system of exams came into force (which showed in 2003 in previous years' versions of this - maybe I was missing the 2002 data?) At the time substantially fewer children sat them (with more taking AS levels) which could explain an increase in average pupil performance. Indeed the blue line, whcih is simply the increase in the number of A-level points received by the country as a whole, showed little increase that year. However next year numbers shot back up and yet the grades stayed higher. Pupil numbers are increasing again who take A-levels, and so all country grade inflation/point improvement is running at a higher rate.

David Cameron

On his time at Eton, he said: 'When I was 14, 15, 16, I was doing things that teenagers do ... drinking too much, being caught having the odd fag, things like that.

This can't be right. Fagging was abolished at Eton in July 1980, when Cameron would have been only 13. Shades of Wor Jackie.

Enfant terrible bingo

Martin Amis is 60, the Guardian's homepage says. My first reaction was 'they're going to say enfant terrible'. Even I however wasn't expecting it to be said in both headlines of their first two articles here.

And the Independent.

The Guardian gets in on the act

Next they'll be showing a table of how to adjust your grades for grade inflation!

[thanks CB]

England win the Ashes

England have won the Ashes back. In 2004 we had the same hopes only to see them dashed, but maybe after this victory middle class people in the South of England will now start to watch cricket.

UPDATE: Now it's ended the recession!

A-level results

We're only getting the first results in, but as John B notes in the comments below, it seems the Telegraph is still flying the glag for blonde girls leading the way with multiple As. However they don't appear to be jumping in the air, another sign perhaps of couch-potato Britain. The Guardian meanwhile has some hirsute boys. Nothing from the Times or Mail as yet. But it general it looks as if the trend away from blonde girls being best at A-levels is still in place.

Update: They're getting into their stride now. The Mail article even has the lot, including jumping in the air, although I think they might be being ironic.

Spurs are top of the league!

As if it was a bit peeved by the attention other sports have been getting (the Ashes is still on, no?) the Premiership has already seen two games for many teams. AND SPURS ARE TOP!*.

Being generally pessimistic I prefer to see it as meaning they are 6/40th of their way to avoiding relegation, but there you go.

And Burnley beat Manchester United! If we don't get a post on MTMG about that, I'll eat this blog.

*London clubs in general are doing very well, with 3 of the top 4, 4 of the top 6, and 5 of the top 8 places in the country.

My 3rd post on athletics

A few years back I looked at the evolution of the world 100m. The news that Usain Bolt has beaten his previous 9.69s with a 9.58s demands a 3rd post.

As far as I can see this is the best improvement (0.11s) in a 100m record in the era of electronic timing (and maybe some time before), beating the 0.05s improvement of Maurice Greene in 1999 (also, obviously, that is true in % terms). It also is getting quite close to the 'natural limit' argued for here. I wonder how wind-assisted it was?

End of free internet news

I've changed my mind entirely on whether charging for content on the internet will work, and now in fact I think moves by theTimes to start charging will be a success and everyone will follow. It always seemed a weird business model to give away everything for free - I must spend nearly £200/year less on newspapers than I did.

I wonder however what will happen to columnists? Most of them seem to want to republish their columns on their own websites (this is how I've always read John Kay and Martin Wolf from the FT) and I suppose this will be allowed to continue, as (I think it was Felix Salmon who pointed this out) many types of columnist really need to be read as widely as possible for the concept to work

Anyway from Monday this 'blog will be charging £10 a week.

What's he done now?

Bill Clinton lands in North Korea for surprise talks

...girl's parents said to be concerned but confident he will do the 'right thing'.

Alan Johnson, ntm and tm

Over the years this 'blog, along with various others, has fretted over the confusion caused by the high profile of Alan Johnson, the Cabinet Minister and Trade Unionist, and Alan Johnson, the Professor at Edge Hill University. It's not been merely theoretical - numerous people, including the Guardian's picture department, have been confused. To aid we have tended to refer to Alan Johnson of Edge Hill as Alan 'not the minister' Johnson, or simply ntm.

Today we have evidence that Alan Johnson has suffered as much as the rest of us. The Independent reports that he has obtained one of the government's new ID cards, far in advance of anyone else. With its photograph and holographic technology, there is now no reason why people will not be able to identify which Alan Johnson is which. The bill of £5bn for the taxpayer is surely reasonable given the severity of the problem and I commend Alan Johnson for taking this step.

Taxpayer's Alliance

An old and easy target, but the calculations quoted from this report are really screwy, aren't they?

In some ways it is a repeat of their old calculation that if you earn tax at the higher rate and spend it all (in fact this example is about spending none of it, strangely) on high tax goods and so your marginal rate is enormous. It also takes a US calculation that was hardly accepted at the time and applies it directly, with no mention of various reliefs. And it's an odd way to look at things anyway.

The weird thing is it quotes Theo Paphitis, of Dragon's Den, in saying something like 'this is my children's inheritance'. If he really believes they'll only get 90% of it, then the investments he invests in must be much better than they are made to seem on TV.

It doesn't represent reality. I'm not even sure if it actual represents anything that is possible.

Free wine!

winefountainsmall
Originally uploaded by mjtphotos

Here is the monastery at Irache and its free wine fountain for pilgrims on route somewhere. You can drink what you want but you can't take any away with you (in containers).

MPs expenses and Ian Gibson

At the time of the MPs' expenses scandal I took issue with those, such as John B (not mentioned in that post), who said it was all a storm in teacup and most of the public anger was rather manufactured.

However the new public anger over the forced deselection of Ian Gibson has made me wonder if I was wrong. Gibson was a serious offender compared to most MPs, his claim, or perhaps tactics, one that (unlike some others) would never have been justified in amost any other job. And yet it doesn't seem to matter because he was an 'independent' or 'maverick'.

It reminds me somewhat of the appearance of Bernand Manning on the Mrs Merton Show, when after being roundly criticised for his racism, and booed by the audience, he said something along the lines of 'But the Embassy raised £2,000 for charity last week' at which point the audience began applauding as if what went before hadn't.

Of course we shouldn't necessarily believe the worst of the people of Norwich - I've not seen any proof that Gibson would have won if he had been standing, in fact I suspect he would not. But it's an odd angle for the press to play up, and Labour MPs in the BBC story.

Bendy buses

I've just seen a clip on BBC London about the scrapping of bendy buses. Unless I was mistaken, when the Routemaster made its final journey crowds actually went to watch. Quite bizarre.

[I think the policy is silly - perhaps bendy buses on some routes aren't desirable but they do a good job of transporting people at peak times and it'll surely be very expensive to buy 800 new buses]

Ladybird books

I missed this one
Originally uploaded by mjtphotos

It looked fun back then.

Taken from (in all their sunny glory) here (via CT). London in 1961 was epecially sunny, and except for the pool of London I guess not much has changed in what they show (oh and Heathrow). Here's an editorial meeting of the Daily Mail (I think) which looks a jolly affair.

Books I read on holiday

All courtesy of Willesden Library:

Hurrah for the Blacksirts, by Martin Pugh. Certainly a very readable book, but I would tend to agree with Ferdinand Mount that Pugh fails to argue his thesis that fascism had deeper roots in Britain than commonly thought. It's all about Mosley really, and an uncommon amount of Scottish lords with links to the right-wing of the Conservative Party. But Mosley of course was a unifying fascist, a member of the Labour Party and Conservative party. And the New Party, and the BUF, and the one after the war no-one can remember. Pugh says the New Party, at least until near the end, wasn't particularly antisemitic, i.e compared to the baseline of quite severe antisemitism that was considered normal.

Full Hearts and Empty Bellies: A 1920s Childhood from the Forest of Dean to the Streets of London, by Winifred Foley.

The sort of book I would only get from a library, this is a memoir of a woman from the New Forest area and her life as a child and young adult, the latter spent 'in service' in London. The one conclusion one can draw is to be happy not to have been poor and born in 1910 (although might it have been exaggerated?). Foley died just this year and apparently was bit more famous than I realised. She and her husband to be turn up at the Battle of Cable Street, to link to the first book, an event that was for the 1930s what the Sex Pistols' gig at the Free Trade Hall was to the 1970s, one with about ten million people there, or so it seems.

My Trade: A short history of British journalism, by Andrew MARR. Readers will know he is not my favourite of people, his mid-life crisis when he pretended to be a gerbil I found particularly annoying. But this in fact is quite an interesting book, and although he's a bit brown-nosing about some of his fellow journalists, he's does refer to Janet Street-Porter as 'dreadful' right at the end, which was unexpected.

Hitler's home front: Wurttemberg under the Nazis, by Jill Stephenson. As the title suggests this looks as life on the home front in the largely (Stuttgart excepted) German region of Wurttemberg. The conclusion is essentially that such rural areas tended to be run by themselves to a degree which made even Nazi dictatorship harder, although much of their programme was implemented even here. Otherwise much as usual.

Our hidden lives: the everyday diaries of a forgotten Britain, by Simon Garfield. I enjoy this type of book, Simon Garfield's specialty, which is an edited collection of Mass-Observation diary entries, this time in the immediate post-war period. The difficulty is in knowing to what degree the editing is giving a rather skewed view - the author says he has chosen excerpts often because of what we know now or to contrast views held then with now. For instance two contributors (at least) wish Hitler had been given more time to 'finish the job'.

Rush: the autobiography, by Ian Rush & Seeing Red, by Graham Poll. Entertaining enough, these. Ian Rush was someone I didn't like as child, for he was always scoring goals for Liverpool, the Man U of their day. But he comes across as a likeable figure and says that the infamous 'It was life a foreign country' about his time in Juventus was a joke. There's one strange bit where he is playing for Sydney Olympic in 2000 and Rafa Benitez asks him to return to Liverpool - which just can't be right, can it? Graham Poll doesn't come across as particularly likeable, which he is at pains to tell us is OK but clearly it isn't. There's a bit of David Brent about him, not least because he has the most objectionable of traits, being a 'practical joker' [something which Gazza of course took to the ultimate degree]. On the other hand he's clearly thought about what he wants to say, and I tend to agree with him about some of the behaviour of certain soccer players, and just wish he'd sued them for slander if his allegations are correct. Plus he does give an interesting background into how referees prepare for games and the behind-the-scenes of a major tournament. Poll never had a good one, it seems, culminating in the famous if a bit unfortunate three yellows in 2006.

Is Wales still with us?

UK GDP fell by 2.4% in Q1 09 over Q4 08 [1][2], which following on from a 1.8% decline in Q4 08, 0.7% in Q3 08 and 0.1% in Q2 08, means a 4.9% year-on-year decline.

To put this in some context, it is as if the entire Welsh economy had ceased to be plus a bit of Cornwall.

[1] Seasonally adjusted, otherwise it's nearly a 4% quarterly drop.
[2] Biggest since 1958 all the papers are saying, which suggests the ONS briefed them on it, but all the data I have says Q1 1974 was slightly larger.

Dumbing down

There's something a little strange reading about 'dumbing down' in the Daily Telegraph.

I can't quite put my finger on it...

Volatility in British poltics

Peter C challanged me a few weeks back on my statement that the concept of 'record swing' was less important as political trends had got more volatile. He noted that parties seemed to retain power for longer now than they used to. I'm still not backing down, but my initial attempt to prove this hasn't worked. Using this excellent resource of Guardian ICM polls back to 1984, and filling in a few monthly gaps by interpolation (only about four polls in the mid 1980s and strangely February this year) the following chart shows the average monthly change in the Conservative share of the vote over the past year. I've used absolute values, so if the Conservatives over the past year went up 1%, down 1%, up 1%, down 1% and so on, that would average at 1%, not 0%.

Anyway in the year to Feb 2009 the Conservative vote share has been more volatile on this measure than at any time since May 1989, but on the other hand in Feb 2006 and then before in Feb 02 it was less volatile than any other period, and if there is a trend it probably is towards less volatility (dividing the % change by their vote share doesn't make much of a difference, by the way). I suppose this is partly because a lot of this period they have been down to their core support, but that of course is not helpful to my theory either.

[Larger image here]

I might share the same dishwasher as Tony Blair

Siemens, £515, it sounds very similar.

Rather dodgy this claim of his, although the Telegraph's trying to confuse leaving No.10 with leaving Parliament, surely?

You have to pay money to save money

George Osborne claimed £40 for DVDs of two of his own speeches on 'value for money' for taxpayers. Which is quite lovely. [via the Stoa]

The Real Cost of Living Index is BACK!!!

And apparently prices are down 10% year-on-year. Full credit to the Telegraph for still publishing this, I'd assumed it would be allowed to die a death.

The BNP and other parties

Google trends tells us that the areas where "British National Party" is searched most relative to other searches are Luton, Bradford, and Maidenhead, Nottinham, Leeds and Hull. Then Bletchley, which crops up a lot in these google trends things. UKIP, however, are from Maidenhead, Liverpool, Brighton, Nottingham and then Cambridge (with good old Bletchley coming up). The English Democrats are from Bristol, Croyden, and so on.

Nick Griffin

The Times' profile is interesting - among other things it claims he has two dogs called Anne and Frank.

Football transfer fees

The BBC gives us a handy (not sure about the accuracy) chart of world record transfer fees in sterling (note it's slightly different in euros) back to 1905.

Ronaldo's, if it happens, is by far the largest, even if you adjust for inflation. Zidane's in 2009 prices is about £57m, Shearer's £21m. Rossi, at £1.75m in 1976, is equivalent to £9.4m today, Cruyff's £922k, £8.3m today. On these figures the first £1m player was Jeppson (£52k) in 1952, but Ferreyra in 1932 (£23k) was only just short at £950k.

Current records are far in advance of anything seen before, even in real terms and even as a % of national GDP. Spain's purchase of Ronaldo for about 70m euros makes it 0.007% of Spanish GDP. Looking at Italian transfers in the 1950s, the record was about 0.001% of GDP, rising in the 1970s to about 0.0023% and by the early 1990s to about 0.0032% of GDP.

British business sells £80m of goods to Spain

Ah, that explains why Sterling has been so strong today.

The most unpleasant story of the year

Mouse found in maltloaf. With a picture.

Poor arguments against PR

"It lets parties like the BNP get seats"

David Cameron just made this argument (and Gordon Brown somewhat supported it). I've never understood it. If 5% of the country supports the BNP, it hardly makes the problem go away to design an electoral system to give them no representation in a parliament. It's the voting stage which is where their appeal needs to be beaten, not at the distribution of parliamentary power.

Furthermore FPTP doesn't give voters anymore power to remove bad governments than any other system. It does give voters the power to remove bad MPs more than, say, a party list PR system, but not more than many other forms of PR, indeed STV can give more.

Also Gordon Brown is as 'unelected' as any other Prime Minister, and as 'unelected' as David Cameron will be, unless David Cameron is proposing massive constitutional change.

No, you are joking

and it's moderately funny.

A general election every day

I think I've got it. I was toying with the idea that it would be sensible to copy the Senate, and re-elect a third of parliament every two years. It would certainly keep the government on its toes, but would surely also mean constant electioneering. And then it struck me - constant electioneering - what an idea. Why not re-elect every seat equally staggered over five years? Five years multiplied by 51 weeks (Christmas break) is 255, so if we have two a week, say Sunday and Thursday, that makes 510 MPs. This is slightly fewer than have we now, so we could either reduce the number of MPs, or there could be simply be another on Tuesdays of every other week.

Think of the benefits. 'Political junkies' would actually come to resemble real junkies, having stayed up to 4am two or three times a week for the results. Opinion polls would become unnecessary, as there would be a real election every day. A government in trouble, like now, would be able to count the number of weeks until it lost its majority (about 20 weeks at this rate) and would be forced to make ever more ludicrous efforts to turn the country around. And countless more advantages.

Labour in London

The Labour vote held up better in London than elsewhere (down 3.5% points, or about 1/7th). Is this related to something the BBC mentioned last night about votes where there were also council elections saw a higher turnout and lower Labour vote than where it was just Euro-elections (which was the case in London). Or is there another reason?

A bigger swing than ever before

Why do news organisations, and in particularly the BBC, think that it is relevant or interesting that the Tories need the largest swing since whenever to get a majority? It's not as if the 2005 votes are bought out of storage and put in the ballot boxes and then the election is about trying to add to them or remove them. Each election is essentially a blank slate. In any case political trends have got more volatile (partly because of third parties and similarly I guess because of less attachment to the main parties).

Euro election results

Of course Labour's share of the vote will be pitiful, they only seem to have put candidates up in the UK region. But what time will we get the results? Do they slowly release them from about 3am to give it a feel of a normal election night?

It is a Blairite plot

Is this important? Surely it was pretty obvious there was some co-ordination of things. I guess it makes it harder for any new leader to even provide a figleaf of unity. Also it makes a lot of the punditry around in the sunday papers look a bit foolish, for example in the same newspaper that reveals the co-ordination their political columnist declares there was no co-ordination.

A naked former Czech prime minister

Political scandals in other countries are just better than ours, aren't they?

A solution to the current crisis

My friend suggested Johnson as PM, Johnson (Boris) as Chancellor. Johnson and Johnson would sponsor it for 100 years at $100bn, and hence all would be OK.

But I prefer this idea. Alan Johnson says to Gordon Brown that he'll appoint him Chancellor if he steps down and supports Alan Johnson. Ok, it's not perfect. But then AJ calls an election for October 25th (a Sunday, sensible day for an election) and everyone is happy.

Ps On taxation. I've never quite understood the excitement that lower taxes brings, as the amounts just seem quite small. Say taxes are now about 40% of GDP. The most anyone can expect is taxes are cut by about 5% of gdp (in fact the chance of this is very small). Even such a hefty cut would give you an extra 1/12th income, which is the equivalent of 3 hours work/week. Which doesn't seem worth the huge amount of time and effort people spend demanding it.

Mandelson

The peculiar irony of New Labour's endgame is that it was all foretold by an accidental prophet named Tony Blair. "My project will be complete," he once declared, "when the Labour party learns to love Peter Mandelson."

And lo, it has come to pass. As the Hazel Blearses of this world appear to be communicating messages of infinite fatuity via their accessories, virtually the only senior politician of any stature is Peter Mandelson.

Politics is back, declared Simon Sebag Montefiorie*, something I rather scoffed at, but in fact what with expenses and Gordon's last few days he is on to something. I went to a lovely dinner party last night, in which for the first time in my life, despite in some ways having flirted with the edges of this for six years, I found myself inbetween, albeit not taking part in, a real world** full-on argument between a Eustonaut (not that he'd heard of the Declaration or Alan NTHS) and a warforoiler. My protestations to the excellent host of 'I seen this online, I know where it headed, steer it off now by talking about the Chelsea Flower Show' were (rather wickedly, she seemed keen on a good punch-up) ignored, and I could only limply try to defuse things by raising a toast - of the rather excellent Berry Brothers and Rudd Cremant de Limoux, have I mentioned that? - to Richard Cheney.

* Yes, it's true. The BBC***, in a moment of sheer madness, have decided to ape Dragon's Den for the election with something like Pundit's pit (it's not that, but I can't remember what it was) and their experts are SSM, Greg Dyke, Shirley Williams and a PR person no-one's ever heard of. The mind truly boggles.

** And there were girls there. If any bloggers are interested I might give a talk about it sometime.

*** Did anyone else notice how rude David Dimbleby was to Jeremy Vine, at least between 5am and 8am Friday morning?

A man from Newport writes

Having been a Labour supporter all my life, I now reluctantly will not vote for them again.Hearsay evidence is now admissible in court -the target culture rules and we are constantly under surveillance.The economy is in ruins - where is our Gold?We need a STRONG Govt.- not this lot.

Fed-up, Newport, U.k

James Purnell

Can this really be true?

In a letter to the Sun and the Times, the work and pensions secretary said he was not seeking the leadership but wanted to trigger a debate.

I'm not sure I can quite believe that (and a check of the Times' website doesn't clarify things). Surely a government minister would act a little bit better than that? The Sun?

But bloody hell, James Purnell and Alan Milburn. We really need an election, it's sad to say.

ps Nothing in the Guardian about it, I think the BBC must have got it wrong. I think it was leaked to the Sun, which is slightly different.

History in the making

Letter in today's Metro:

I walked to work this week surrounded by women who were clearly making the most of the summer sunshine. They had ditched their normal smart office attire and chosen instead to wear flip-flops, Birkenstocks and sandals, along with loose-fitting T-shirts and shorts or short, floating dresses. I wondered later, as I sat steaming in my regulation suit, shirt, and tie, is this equality in workplace in action? Would it be acceptable if I were to give my legs and feet a well-deserved airing in sandals and shorts. I supect the answer is no.

M.C., Surrey

The changing price of alcohol, part II

[For part I see here]

Ok, so again to give us a base 'Measuring Worth' tells us that 1 shilling in 1909 (12 old pence, 5 new pence) has the same purchasing power as £3.74 does today (so 75 times as much) and to earn a shilling in 1909 is like earning £19.68 today (so 394 times as much).

Champagne

You could in 1909 get a Saumur, which is presumably a Cremant de Loire, for 2.5 shillings/bottle, and today the Limoux is £8.05, which is 67 times as much, so about the same in real terms.

Champagne proper, of the non-vintage, Veuve Clicquot is 8 shillings a bottle as is Pommery, with Mumm the cheapest at about 5.5 shillings/bottle. In real terms this is £30 and £21, and in fact Veuve Clicquot is still sold, at £30, so absolute no change, and their cheapest champagne today is £18, so a touch cheaper.

Of the vintage stuff, an 1898 Pol Roger went for 9 shillings/bottle, equivalent to £34 today, whereas now for a 1999 Pol Roger you would need to pay £45, rather more, a premium I am going to call a Winston Churchill tax, at least in Britain. However an 1899 Louis Roederer sold for 8.50 shillings/bottle then, today a 2000 sells for £51, so in fact perhaps vintage champagne has just got more expensive. The dearest champagne back in 1909, at least in the price list, was an 1892 Veuve Clicquot at 40 shillings a bottle, equivalent to about £150 today (though in hours the average worker would need to work that's more like £700); today's it's Cristal 2000 at £214.

Wine

Lots of Claret in 1909, a Chateaux Lafite from 1899 at six shillings, or about £22, compares with the same from 2001 today for £301! In fact the price of Bordeaux reds has gone loopy - the dearest in 1909 was an 40 years old Lafite for about £60, today they'll sell you a Latour for £1470/bottle, and that's only if you buy 12. Over in Burgundy the dearest Nuits St Georges sold for 5 shillings in 1909, about 18 pounds today, and there still is one for £20 today although they go up to £55.80.

Summary: Basically booze from Berry Bros & Rudd is much the same price in real terms as it was back in 1909, which means in terms of the number of hours the average person need to work to buy it, it has fallen by about 4/5ths. The exception, and it is a big one, seems to be the top-end wines, at least from Bordeaux, the price of which appears to be insane. I suppose this is something to do with the investment market or snob value.

British politics

I managed to vote this morning, despite not having a polling card which made me think I had somehow become disenfranchised. Who I voted for must remain between me and the ballot box, and users of Facebook. I can reveal it was a very long ballot paper, so much so that it had to be folded twice to get it into the ballot box and even then it didn't really fit.

Labour's campaign in this election has not been from the textbooks. Certainly they managed to keep a high media profile, and have shown a refreshing understanding of the economic difficulties facing the country, with 1/11 of the Cabinet losing their jobs, about the same as the rise in unemployment predicted with this recession. But I didn't get any literature from them, and in fact I didn't receive any election literature from any party other than the Ukip (surely the strangest party ever - Tim Worstall, who believes in unlimited immigration, is a candidate for a party which er... doesn't) and that Christian one.

One other thing. The next election, maybe in only a few months, will be the general election. I think, with horrors of horrors Alan Milburn back in the frame, that what actually happened in the last general election, in 2005, as been forgotten. Labour began disastrously with Milburn in charge, and it was only when Brown took over that things stabilised. A better leader than Michael Howard could have made huge inroads. Matthew d'Ancona wrote a good column noting that Brown was the star of the election, but more interestingly that Blair was hated, Brown mildly liked but not much, but together they were very popular. Perhaps like they say about Brian Clough and Peter Taylor, it just doesn't work one without the other.

The changing price of alcohol I

I popped into Berry Brothers & Rudd, the wine store, to buy some Cremant de Limoux - absolutely fantastic, btw, I doubt 1/20 people could tell the difference between it and good Champagne, and they gave me a price list, plus a facsimile of their 1909 price list (with a modern inside cover warning 'this is a replica, prices and products are not valid'.

This gives us a chance to compare prices. To give us a base 'Meausuring Worth' tells us that 1 shilling in 1909 (12 old pence, 5 new pence) has the same purchasing power as £3.74 does today (so 75 times as much) and to earn a shilling in 1909 is like earning £19.68 today (so 394 times as much). I'm going to ignore taxes, I suspect they are much higher today at point of sale, not sure about import etc. Anyway customers pay what they pay so off we go.

One problem in these comparisons is the price of wine can vary by thirty times for the same style, and so a matching error might explain the difference, not a change in prices over time.

Port (of which I know nothing - except the Magdalen college should have been undrinkable)

In 1909 a vintage Warre from 13 years previous sold for 56 shillings per 12, which makes 23 (new) pence each. Today a Warre from 1994, so one year older, sells for £43.55 a bottle. That is 189 times more expensive. So Warre sherry has more than doubled in price in real terms, although in hours worked to buy (let's say) it is about half the price. For comparision in 1909 they sold an 1881 Dow's for 10.5 shillings a bottle (or 52.5 new pence), today they sell a 1877 Dow (so four years older) for £52.80 a bottle. This is almost exactly 100 times as much, so Dow appears to have lost ground against Warre, although a direct comparision is impossible.

Sherry (of which I known nothing)

Two of which kind of match up. Manzanilla, 3.5 shilliings bottle v £8.50, and East India, 6 shillings a bottle v £11.92. This gives us a ratio of 48 and 40, which suggests sherry has a got a lot cheaper, almost halving in real terms and in terms of hours worked about 1/10th. But we might not be comparing like with like.

Brandy (again zilch)

Impossible to compare I think. They have Grande Champagne Cognac in both lists, but the current is not dated, and sells for about £33/bottle, with £53 for the reserve, whereas the 1909 list has it from 1858 and 1805(!) and a 'curiosity' from 1797. The 1858 retailed for £2.50/bottle, a pretty astronomical sum. The 'good, ordinary' sold for about 5.5 shillings a bottle, which is 27.5p, compared to today's £24, so we're looking about 90 times, so a slight increase in real terms. But they have nothing to compare with the more expensive ones.

Whisky (ditto)

Here again a lack of knowledge isn't helping. In 1909 they had a 'very old' Glenlivet, for 8.6 shillings/bottle, and today they have a 1975 Glenlivet for £76.50/bottle. This is a ratio of 176, suggesting much the same as Port, more expensive in real terms but only have half as expensive in hours worked.

Gin (don't like it)

Not much of a range here. 3.5 shillings/bottle in 1909, £12.55 today, a ratio of 70, so that's got cheaper.

Next post, wines and Champagnes.

Economists and the financial system

I thought this article by Benjamin Friedman in the NYRB was worth reading. Early on the makes the point that the financial services sector is essentially a means to an end, which is allocation of capital to where it is needed. The great expansion of such sector in the 1990s and 2000s therefore can be seen - to some extent - as a cost, and its benefits weighed against that.

Sunday Times

Is there more to this proposal to charge for the Sunday Times' website that meets the eye? The Sunday Times is an entertaining enough read if you are having Sunday lunch in a pub, but it's hardly unmissable and I can't quite believe anyone would pay for it online, except perhaps if every other newspaper followed suit.

The wisdom of crowds

This poll look sto me to say 7% of people think 100% of MPs are corrupt, 17% most (so let's say 75%), 24% half (so 50%), 47% a few, so let's say 25%, and 3% none (0%). On a weighted average that gives me...44.38% of MPs are corrupt. If a 'few' is taken to mean 10% that falls to 34.6%.

Proportional Representation

About the one consistent view of this 'blog over the past six years has been in favour of PR for General Elections and while I don't see the connection between an MP expenses scandal* and political and electoral reform, now even David Cameron has decided it's a point worth raising (although he opposes PR) I don't see why I shouldn't jump on the bandwagon.

Basically what we need is Single Transferable Vote. This keeps a constituency link, it reduces the power of a local party as voters get a chance to choose between candidates of the same party, and it tends to be proportional in its outcome. I also think FPTP will only get less proportional as time goes by on the grounds of constituency homogenisation - it's not that you get safe seats in FPTP, it doesn't work without them.

One criticism of PR that I think makes very little sense is 'it hands too much power to political elites'. I think Cameron made this argument himself. It is true that a party list system does make position on the list all important, but as noted above STV is no worse, and probably better than FPTP in this regard. The next stage notes that as you tend to get coalitions it gives various politicians - at this point people often wheel out old Hans Dietrich Genscher - a lot of power. But it's not obvious that a divided country doesn't want such an arrangement, and surely it is handing much less power to elites than giving them an impregnable majority in a system with few checks and balances on 34% of the vote?

* This surely is to do with MPs' relative lack of power, something that will only be solved by reducing their number. But this (as indeed STV) would mean a very different style of government and surely needs a little bit more contemplation than it has got?

Daily Mail website commenters

Given the unpleasantness of the comments that have been allowed up on this story, one can only wonder in amazement at the ones that the Mail's filter didn't allow through.

David Cameron's plans

From his speech/Guardian article:

A Conservative government will put all national spending over £25,000 online for everyone to see,

I am somewhat sceptical this is going to happen, at least in any recognisable form.

A statistical defence of MPs? Or all as bad as each other

Inspired by this piece of 'blog research, and comments by Mark Wadsworth thereto, I decided to see whether the size of an MP's majority was related to the size of their expenses claim. I used the Pippa Norris database and an excel file of expenses I found somewhere.

The results are relatively disappointing. Here is a scatter of MP's total expenses in pounds and their majority as a % of the vote.



There is essentially no relationship. What there is in fact says that the larger the majority, the smaller the expenses (it is sloping top left to bottom right).

Looking at various other variables from Pippa Norris's database, the one that mainly stands out is region. She categories the regions into 10: 1=S.East, 2=Eanglia, 3=Gr.London, 4=S.West, 5=W.Midlands, 6=E.Midlands, 7=York&Humber, 8=Nwest, 9=North, 10=Wales, 11=Scotland [1]. Charting these we get:



and if we average each region, put in the standard deviation, the somewhat clearer.



where the Scottish [2] seem to have the highest expenses on average, the E.Midlands the largest deviation, and London the lowest.

Back to the majority then, the obvious thing to do is regress expenses against both the region and size of the majority. However this again gives a negative relationship, suggesting that expenses are £138,559 plus £1,778 for every 1 on the region the MP is in but £209 less per year for every extra 1% point on his/her majority. Messing around with the region numbers to make them more correlate with 'distance from london' improves the regression slightly, but doesn't change the negative relationship with majority.

Finally, if one splits up the costs into the categories given, which are: 2nd Home Allowance, London Supplement, Office, Staffing, Central Stationery, Stationery and Postage, IT, Staff cover, Comms, Travel the reason London MPs are cheaper is becuase of the lack of 2nd home allowance. The main reason MPs from Scotland are so expensive is because of their enormous travel bill, on average £20,224, nearly £5,000 higher than those from the North of England, and nearly double those from Wales. This seems mostly obvious. Otherwise the variation is rather small. If we exclude travel costs, then all regions become more similar, with E.Anglia (for no specific cost, it is just more expense slightly across most categories) leaping ahead.




[1] & [2]: the first draft of this blamed the Welsh for being surprisingly expensive but I think Pippa Norris has got her regions the wrong way around.

UKIP

Good lord I've just received the UKIP's election leaflet. It (looks terrible, but that's by the by) has a huge photograph of Winston Churchill who presumably is endorsing the UKIP. This rather beats Norman Tebbit's comments. Should Churchill not be expelled from the Conservative Party?

Oh no, I've just remembered he died in 1965. What a shower.

Update: Here it is. And check this quote out:

David Campbell Bannerman commenting on the launch said: "Sir Winston is an ideal icon for our campaign because it is high time that Britain found that old Dunkirk spirit again and learned to fight its corner in adversity. We've accepted far too much nonsense from Brussels over the years and it is time to say NO MORE!"

Hey! Let's call in the Americans, fire up the Lancasters and bomb BERLIN!! AGAIN!

Labour's lowest share since 1943

There's been a lot of stuff about this from last week's (and perhaps this week's opinion polls). For example here [warning News of the World]. The point is not that their share was lower in 1943, but that's when opinion polling first began. There was a lot of polling and similar during the war.

The commentary talks about Gallup, I'm not sure if that's related to this [PDF]British Institute of Polling one in 1943, which puts Labour on 37% and the Tories on 25%, which actually understates both party's share of the vote as there are a range of other similar responses, mostly favouring Labour I think. If I recall correctly one of the shocks about Labour's 1945 win was that it shouldn't have been a shock, opinion polls and byelections all pointed to a victory.

On the poll background detail here

Wolfram Alpha

I expect I'm going to love it, although first impressions are it seems like a more out-of-date version of the Economist's World in Figures. Will keep trying things, it certainly looks pretty.

Blog - Brings up b log x which I suppose is one way of looking at them.
Alan Johnson - Tells us that he is a 59yr old politician. Has nothing to say on one of the greatest debates of our time re: not the minister.
Decent Left - It 'isn't sure what to do with your input'

Now it appears to have exceeded its test load. I think I need a bit more practice. It's good on finding chemistry information.

Parliamentary salaries in an international context

MP as % Congressman
Originally uploaded by mjtphotos

Chris Dillow does an excellent job in showing how an MP's salary has changed as a % of the average salary (of a full-time worker).

I thought perhaps they were upset in an international context, what will all those fact-finding trips to Washington and so on. But in fact as the chart shows (click for large image) an MP's salary has hardly ever been higher in history than it is now as a % of a Congressman (here shown as a % of a member of the House, but the Senate has been very similar - they really haven't done very well since the 1960s). In the days when we Ruled the World they got by on about a quarter.

Note: I've done a 12m moving average of the exchange rate to minimise the fluctuations, the means the final figure is based on a rate of 1.69 rather than today's 1.5, which would make the MP somewhat worse off.

Telegraph's Real Cost of Living Index

Has anyone spotted this for April? It seems to be late, unless I've missed it.

More on expenses

I don't really understand David Cameron's personal gesture.

He is repaying £680 claimed for repairs which included the removal of wisteria from the chimney of his second home.

Why has he now decided it was wrong? What has changed since he made the claim in the first place?

MPs expenses

I wasn't particularly interested in this story at first, and I am sure the outrage and press commentary is far over the top. But I was a little amazed by David Aaronovitch's piece here. This bit in particular:

Read this exchange, and tell me who is the moral exemplar. Margaret Moran, the MP for Luton South, on TV on her disgraceful [note this is Aaro being sarcastic] claim for a second-home allowance on a flat in Southampton. MM: “My partner works in Southampton. He has done for 20 years. If I'm ever going to see my partner of 30 years, I can't make him come to Luton all the time, I have to be able to have a proper family life sometimes, which I can't do unless I share the costs of the Southampton home with him.”

A viewer texts in: “ARE THESE PEOPLE INSANE - DO THEY REALISE HOW THEY SOUND!! I'm so angry. I've been a single mum, working, holding down a job, paying my mortgage, my council tax and I don't have the luxury of asking the taxpayer to help me keep my family together.”

I am afraid it is the viewer who does not realise how she sounds. First there's the obvious point that the taxpayer probably has helped her to keep her family together. And quite right too, but there's no glimmer of empathy. Second, there is the almost punitive desire that MPs should actually have it bad. Not healthy, Sigmund, not healthy at all.

Well that's a bit harsh, David. The 'viewer' (Liz Price, google tells us) perhaps should not have used capitals [but see the PS]. But what else is wrong with the comment? The snide remark about the taxpayer is simply conjecture, unless he means something mainly irrelevant such as child benefit or state schools. The 'and quite right too' is pure Aaro. I don't see any punitive desire 'that MPs should actually have it bad'. The 'viewer' is surely making the simple argument that families make compromises over employment location all the time, and it is not what most people would imagine the MP's second home allowance was for.

Perhaps there is more to Moran's argument than meets the eye, in fact I am sure there is. But Aaro doesn't tell the reader what it is.


ps In fact unless the piece is somewhere else Aaro has added the capital letters and second exclamation mark. Which is rather underhand.

Car scrappage schemes

Are all the rage, but the British one is apparently not generous enough:

Julia Smith, who lives in Basingstoke in Hampshire, is one of those who initially thought the scheme would be useful, but has since decided against it. She was going to scrap her 13-year-old Volvo, and buy a new one instead. With the scrappage scheme discounts, a brand new Volvo would have cost her in the region of £21,000. But she then found exactly the same model with less than 10,000 miles on the clock for £17,000. A saving of £4,000 proved irresistible. "In practice this scheme is just not working," she says. "I think it just hasn't been thought through terribly well."

Er, that's a second-hand Volvo, not a new one. It's comparing apples and oranges.

Like George W Bush

The Conservatives have obviously decided that George W Bush bashing plays well in Brent (or perhaps nationwide). In a pretty dreadful section on the economic crisis, their (seemingly competent) candidate's latest newsletter tells us that:

The economic crisis is much worse in the UK than the rest of Europe. This is because Gordon Brown (like George W Bush in the US) failed to...

JFK makes prices in the UK lower on a year-on-year basis

I think that is what the Guardian is trying to show.

LoonNeedsTOGetAGrippquikkly

In perhaps the most weird comment of 2009 (my bolding):

He won’t (really) apologise, and he won’t go - no not at all. The point as you have well made is power, just that. to be “in power” - it does not even matter to these GramscoFabiaNazis if everybody else is in prison, such as in North Korea or Cuba for instance - so long as “one is in power”.

I often think of Ceaucescu these days - anyone remember him? At least Sarah Hobbsbawm does not claim to be the mother of her people, we are spared that, yet.

GramscoFabiaNazis. Apparently this is a popular term worthy of repeating, although apparently only to the author of it. I have no idea who he means by "Sarah Hobbsbawn". I think it is a combination of Gordon Brown's wife Sarah, and Eric Hobsbawm, although perhaps it has something to with Hobbs.

[Via Tim Worstall's comments]

The Bank of England should have cut rates to 0%

If the Telegraph's Real Cost of Living Index is a more accurate measure than the CPI or RPI, then real interest rates are 5.3%, which is clearly too high in a recession.

Oh dear

I suspect Bob Quick's surname might be descriptive of how soon his resignation will come. I think he's the same man who managed the difficult achievement of accusing the Conservatives of something they hadn't done.

Billboard

billboard
Originally uploaded by mjtphotos

This seems more sensible. Create your own at James Holden's (via Mark Wadsworth)/

The Telegraph's Real Cost of Living Index

Think back to mid-2008 and the Telegraph launches its Real Cost of Living Index. This alternative to the CPI or RPI is designed to better show what the 'average family' or indeed the 'hard-working family' is experiencing of price rises.

Well apparently their cost of living is falling by 4.8% per year. Bizarrely a few weeks' ago when it was down by 4.3% on the year the Telegraph was of the opinion that it's not as representative as 'food prices'.

But outside of Telegraph hackdom we should rejoice at this news. The cost of living for hard working families, dare I say the 'coping class', is falling by 4.8% per year. If the error in the measurement of the CPI/RPI is matched by one in the GDP deflatior This means far from falling this year, personal incomes are in fact rising.

Jeff Randall's rant

Hilarious stuff. A friend once noted that Jeff Randall would blame Gordon Brown if his toilet was broken, and he comes close.

When he tries to make things sound bad, it just sounds silly.

Since the turn of the millennium, Britain's finest have paid about £1.2 trillion – trillion – in income tax.

The turn of the millennium is now eight or nine years ago, lumping all years into one is something I'm sure Jeff Randall would criticise Gordon Brown for*.

It has does have some comic, almost bathetic, moments, though.

It gets worse. Rural communities are banned from hunting foxes

It ends in the somewhat strange suggestion that teenage thugs are most of a threat to members of the Army. This man used to be employed by the BBC, to its shame.

* Er, but Jeff Randall would criticise Gordon Brown for anything. So I mean 'a normal critic of Gordon Brown would criticise him for'.

Lottery scams

Can anyone explain how this poor man lost his house?

Hanging of Google Street View Camera at dawn tomorrow

Villagers unsure whether it is French.

The Superpower and its smaller ally

From today's Daily Mail. Link to story here. Quote of the day when Prince Philip asked Mr Obama how he had managed to stay awake during his gruelling schedule:

'I've had breakfast with the Prime Minister, meetings with the Chinese, the Russians, David Cameron, and I'm proud to say I didn't nod off in any of them

The Guardian's April Fool is a rip-off of mine from years ago

Theirs is here, mine was here .

Chokes

Cars used to have chokes, didn't they? The existence of such things I had completely forgotten about until about an hour ago. More revelations from my cycle ride in later.

Hot tea is cancerous

Apparently adding milk saves us.

I'm still learning...

Ceci n'est pas l'actualités

Is this man for real?

“This sinks Brown below the waterline,” said Bill Jones, professor of politics at Liverpool Hope University. Brown’s “whole strategy is based on borrowing and now he can’t get anyone to buy his gilts. This means the prospect of going cap in hand to the IMF hovers increasingly into view.”

To my surprise Liverpool Hope University does exist. But does Bill Jones? The quote is hardly what you would expect from a real professor of politics? "Cap in hand"? And what does he mean by "can't get anyone to buy his gilts?".

Google suggests his homepage would be here, but I'm not authorised. The cache has something but not much.

It wasn't worth what you paid for it

Many countries seem to be realising that when they exchanged their shiny new manufactures for lovely US dollars (or in fact euros, pounds and so on), they got a bit swizzled, and the dollars weren't worth what they paid for them. Now they're a tad angry, and propose a new system.

Well hang on. The £6.99 I paid for a set of PC speakers from Mikomi (Taiwan) wasn't well spent either. Neither was the cycle helmet, £8.99, the set of knives, £0.99, the shredder, £Free. In fact I have a very long position in all manner of manufactured junk that seemed cheap, and turned out cheaper.

This works both ways. In fact perhaps the legacy of the last 20 years will turn out to be that economic growth was artificially boosted by the simple technique of pretending everything was worth more than it actually was - dollars, cheap tat, houses, equities, Mercedes Benzs, so on and so on. Perhaps Laban et al are right, if not quite for the right reasons.

Taxation

Edmund Conway suggests that the government should list how it spends taxes.

Take the average taxpayer on a salary in the mid £20,000s, who pays around £5,000 in taxes. He or she would probably be shocked to hear ...that £890 is spent on the National Health Service, but that a paltry £289 is spent on defence, and £169 on transport.

Would they really be that shocked? Healthcare is expensive, everyone knows that. In Britain for many years it has been rather cheaper than in most other countries. For a while in the early part of this decade I worked out more was spent on health administration in the US than all of the UK's health budget.

Aside from being more expensive for small businesses, it would be relatively simple to implement. There's probably a website that already does it.

Inflation

Laban said...

Paul - if the RPI is saying 0.1%, the RPI is being fiddled - just like the CPI was. I just don't trust our government any more.

Now, Laban's a big conspiracist, but this is quite a common view. Last year when the CPI was lower than the RPI the RPI was the 'true' indicator because it included more representative items and the CPI didn't, now the CPI is higher than the RPI the CPI is seen as the better measure I suspect.

One problem in this argument is that inflation figures feature in all aspect of economic statistics, as they convert nominal pounds into real pounds. I remember one commentator (don't remember the name) claiming that UK inflation had been 10% for a decade or more. If that is true then he presumably believes the GDP deflator has been that high too, and in which case our GDP per head is in fact lower than Hungary's.

But of course then the pound would be massively overvalued, so it must be the case that all countries fiddle their inflation figures, and this raises the possibility that there has been no economic growth in the last 20 years in any developed country. This might explain a few things.

Peter Cuthbertson joined the group No Knighthood For Ted Kennedy. -

An horrendous act of lese majeste. God Save The Queen.

[No link, it's Facebook if you can't guess]

ps On that issue, it's not right to celebrate someone's death but apparently it's OK (post and comments) to look forward to someone's. What a ghastly collection of individuals (the comments and post, not Peter's group).

Ok, you didn't like the Orwell piece

How about the Sen one?

Orwell

Quite a good article on Orwell by Julian Barnes.

Romanian banknotes

are really cool. They're made of plastic and have a see-through bit so you can wear it as a mask. Or something like that.

How will you spend yours?

The Bank said it would expand the amount of money in the system by £75bn

That's £1,500 per adult, oh goody. I think I will spend mine on a nice holiday, or wine.

RBS in Bucharest

28022009228
Originally uploaded by mjtphotos

Appears they have some room to spare

Manchester United can no longer be relegated

Always a disappointing moment in the season.

Update: Actually I'm not sure how sophisticated Football365's calculation is. It seems based on just simply their points, and other teams' maximums. But how can Liverpool be relegated? They would have to lose all their gains, and most of the bottom 5 or so would have to win all theirs. But they can't if they play each other. Anyway Man U are clearly not going down.

Guessing the authors of LRB letters World Record

Where's Norris McWhirter when you need him? I claim a new world record the above. It was on word five of I prefer black that I thought 'I bet that's by our EJH' and so it was.

Macro-Economics with Tim Worstall*: a new series

I think this has the potential for serialisation, so consider this the 2nd in a new series 'Macro-economics with Tim Worstall'. The title will be my attempt to decipher what he is saying.

No.1, here:

Left-wingers believe that raising the price of petrol has no impact on its consumption.

No.2

If a company alters the price of its goods in a country with a fixed exchange rate that system has broken down

Notes: To be honest this is a really difficult one and I would appreciate some help. I don't think he is saying that the Chinese government sets the prices of factories, so he must be referring to the exchange rate, and suggesting that as this company is offering a more advantageous exchange rate to foreigners buying its wares the yuan's 'market value' should be less than it is. It's a puzzle as the article makes clear the yuan is not rigidly fixed and has been rising over the past few years. Furthermore I don't see the difference in this than simply cutting your prices, which of course is what happens under fixed exchange rate systems. Yet this is described as the weird 'prices will out'.