More on marriage

Matthew d'Ancona in the Evening Standard notes that those deriding the £20/week marriage bonus proposed by some Tories (IDS's lot):

...forget how poor the poor truly are: the least affluent 10% have a disposable income of less than £90/week. So for them an additional £20/week would be no small windfall.

But can this be true? The IDS proposal is a transferable personal allowance. So the receiver gains 20% on just over £5k a year, which works out at £10/week. However to gain this surely you need to earn two personal allowances - more than £200/week.

Really, Nick?

Nick Cohen in today's Observer:

they ought to know that you never level an accusation you can't substantiate because you make life too easy for your targets when you do.

Is he taking the piss?? His attack (naturally retracted a few weeks later) on Nick Davies is only the most recent example of his own form here.

"Yo! Blair"

David Aaronovitch ticks people off for still believing Bush said "Yo Blair" not "Yeah Blair". But is it so straightforward? Wikipedia sits on the fence, but Aaro's certainty presumably comes from this John Rentoul post, based on this Simon Hoggart piece.

The sound clip Hoggart plays is hard to get to load as its Real Player, but it's the same one as heard here at 18 seconds. It's pretty clearly "Yeah Blair, what are you doing". But there's the problem with this cliip - the transcript was "Yo Blair, HOW are you doing". "How" and "what" are not hard to distinguish, and as clip never goes past the "doing" bit, I don't see any proof that its the same clip.

World's highest BASE jump

Has been made off that tall building in Dubai.

Isn't this a bit like the world's tallest dwarf and the world's shortest giant? Or the hottest winter?

Cameron

What is all this non-tie wearing? My local Conservative candidate is also doing it on his posters dotted all around the area. With Cameron its how I imagine he dresses when on holiday.

The leadership challenge

The Guardian reports:

Just before 10.45am today, Geoff Hoon, the former defence secretary and chief whip, sent out a blank email to members of the parliamentary party.

Is this a well-known tactic? I've always assumed when I received a blank email that someone has pressed send too quickly.

The Thames as a tube line

I was somewhat surprised to read this article last night by Andrew Gilligan on turning the Thames into a transport line equivalent in journeys to the Hammersmith & City line. Apparently it's based on a report by Police Exchange.

Has anyone read it? I assume it's based on highly unrealistic assumptions and dodgy statistics and that's not just because its by Policy Exchange.

Marriage and tax

I think Chris Giles in the FT rather destroys any argument for giving married couples tax breaks.

I suppose the policy is more about sending a signal to your supporters than actually promoting marriage.

The New York Times gets electric light

A piece from 1882 about Edison's introduction of (direct current) electric lighting to the New York Times (for some reason this is not now opening in Firefox when I try, the original article that links to it was from two years ago when the DC was finally turned off and is here).

(via in a roundabout way, here, where Edison 'proves' AC is dangerous by electrocuting an elephant)