Tim Worstall

At the GI.

So, umm, why are governments doing insanely silly things to the food markets?

The B.

Pursuing Northern Crock compensation and lookiing for Bastiat.

Which all sounds great. So where do I sign up? This is a difficult one. Even among exclusive all-male drinking clubs, the Bullingdon is a notably exclusive all-male drinking club. A quick survey of known recent members reveals that around 60% are Old Etonians; the rest simply went to really posh public schools. Osborne is said to have been ragged by fellow Bullers over having attended St Paul’s, the top London day school, which is, apparently, not posh enough. A good school, then, but this in itself isn’t sufficient. You’ve got to have a certain standing. An impressive lineage helps. As does a degree of jaunty charisma, either as a titled clown with a good line in drunken buffoonery, or as - someone with whom it might be handy to have an "in" when it’s all over.

Prospective new members are proposed by a current member and then subjected to a club vote. This is all done in secret. You can be "put up" and blackballed and never be any the wiser. The first a new bug knows about it is when his rooms are invaded (ideally, via the window) and ceremonially trashed by way of initiation ("they overturned some of my flower pots," recalls my source).

So, what this enquiring little mind would like to know is, has anyone ever been put up, voted in and then said, "Bugger off, wankers"?*

*Or words to that effect.

If you could effect one major policy change in the governing of your country, what would it be? > Drastically reduce the areas in which government is involved, most importantly in the provision of health and education services.

If you could choose anyone, from any walk of life, to be Prime Minister, who would you choose? > Perry de Havilland.

What would you do with the UN? > Remove all members in whose country you cannot drink the tap water.

What do you consider to be the main threat to the future peace and security of the world? > The exerting of excessive political control over the lives of individuals, be it the imposition of Islamic law, adoption of communism, or formation of an EU superstate.

Four out of four, don’t you think?

The second is very good.

What made Gordon Brown a great Chancellor of the Exchequer is exactly what makes him an awful PM; the man has the charisma of ground carp.

I’ve muttered about this before and this seems to confirm at least part of it.

It found that workers in the capital and the Home Counties generate a third of the nation’s wealth, producing £375 billion a year in goods and services, out of the nation’s total output of £1,155 billion. London alone produces £218 billion.

Londoners turn out £29,000 worth of goods and services each year per head, compared with £14,396 in Wales, the least-productive part of the country. Northern Ireland and the North East are not far ahead, each region generating £15,200 per head.

OK, that bit we know.

The North-South divide on income continues to grow, the report found. Average weekly incomes in the North East stood at only £455 in 2006, more than a third lower than London, which enjoys weekly incomes of £766.

The earnings gap of £311 is significantly higher than the £282 gap recorded in 2004.

That’s the bit I find most interesting. We’re told endlessly that we have more inequality in the UK than do most other countries. But our possible reaction to that inequality (on the assumption that we have any at all) rather depends on how it comes about. If it’s great inequality within each and every unit of the country then that’s rather different than there being inequality across regions. Two reasons for that:

1) If it is regional inequality then presumably it can be solved by people moving. That they don’t shows that they don’t particularly mind it. Sure, some large percentage (possibly even 100%) of those making the average £455 in the NE would prefer to be making the £766 average in London, if they could stay in the NE, but not if they had to move to London to get it. Thus they prefer the inequality in incomes to the actions necessary to remove it.

2) We’ve also got large variations in regional living costs. Living in the NE (most especially housing costs, but also in food and many other things…check the price of a pint for example) requires a great deal less cash income than living in London. Another way of saying the same thing is that you can have a higher standard of living on the same cash income in the NE than you can in London. So consumption inequality is a great deal lower than income inequality.

So, now we come to the point. We are told that we have much higher levels on inequality in the UK than other EU countries do, and I’ve no doubt that is true: but I’m also certain that at least part of this is due to the regional variations in wages. And I think I’m right in saying that we have greater variations in regional wages than most other EU countries. And further, that we have greater variations in regional prices.

So, by measuring inequality on a national basis, by incomes, we are grossly overstating the actual inequality, most certainly on a consumption basis, when we take the regional varations in prices into account.

Now,. nearly all of that I am certain of. What I don’t know is how much that contributes to the stated inequality figures: I’ve asked around and apparently no one has ever worked it out and I certainly don’t have the skills to do so.

But it would be fascinating to know the answer, wouldn’t it?

For example, white collar female jobs in the NE pay 60% less than the same jobs in London. We would thus, if our economy consisted of only those two groups, be saying that (because we measure poverty as being less than 60% of median income) everyone working in female white collar jobs for the average wage there in the NE was poor….which isn’t really quite what we mean by poverty is it?

The Lords Appointments Commission, which promised to open the Upper House to the masses, comes under attack today for giving “people’s peerages” to bastions of the Establishment.

Nobody really thought they would look outside the usual suspects, did they? That’s not how Establishments work.

— “People’s peers”, nominated by the public and chosen by a committee, were proposed by Tony Blair in 1999

— Out of 3,200 applicants, the first list was whittled down to 15. They included six knights, three professors, three people appointed OBE and two CBE, and were mostly men

— The latest list, announced in April, consists of two knights and a dame: the former head of MI5, a former European Commission grandee and a leading Scottish businessman

As ever when the subject is abortion. Polly:

Never mind that the whole notion of viability has no rational connection to any limit on the date for abortions: from the moment of conception every zygote is potentially viable.

Quite, therefore it’s wrong to stop it moving from potentially viable to it being viable.

If that wasn’t enough to put you off, it also features an ill-advised cameo from Kerry Katona.

What more could be said?

So the figures are out on how much Greener we’re all becoming.

The first signs of a green revolution are emerging around the country as Britons treble their recycling and increase their use of public transport. But this enthusiasm is not reflected in attitudes towards other environmental concerns, with car ownership and use on the rise and air travel increasing "substantially" over the last four years.

So, umm, we’re driving more and flying more. Not very green.

Some will welcome the fact that we are recycling more but, you see, given that climate change is the major environmental problem, and that recycling makes this worse, not better (beyond certain limits) that also isn’t very good.

There exists no commercial, political or social problem that meddling by the European Union cannot make worse. Those who doubt this assertion might care to look at what’s happened to the United Kingdom’s mail system and post office network since the EU Directives of 1997 and 2002, which set out to improve the quality of postal services across member countries.

Someone saw the elephant!

Anyone recognise this?

"But it’s also a country of animal-loving, tea-drinking, charity donors, where queuing remains a national pastime and bastions of civilisation, such as Radio 4, are jealously protected."

Or is this more accurate?

The guide says: "As a glance at the tabloid newspapers will confirm, England is a nation of overweight, binge-drinking reality TV addicts."

Or are both?

Well, quite.

Attacking the West for allegedly restricting Russian foreign investment, he said that the country’s economy would overtake Britain’s this year.

"Russia is currently standing in seventh place in the world," he said.

"According to international experts, it can climb another step as early as this year and overtake Britain."

Britain has the fifth largest economy in the world, while Russia is in 10th place, although its ranking climbs if judged by purchasing power parity.

Not all that much of a surprise, that three times as many people, fuelled by record oil prices, should have a larger economy in total.

What will happen when the inevitable (and I do think it to be so) fall is said oil prices happen is a little different.

On the euro.

Nothing I would disagree with there and very little I would want to add.

I seem to have provoked a reaction here:

I am the Revolution, and I want my fucking country back.

Well said that man!

The B.

On the glass ceiling and one of the more absurd ideas I’ve heard of, even from this government.

Economic illiteracy over trade perhaps?

"I don’t want to leave the European Union and I’ll tell you why. This is a trading nation. Yorkshire relies on traded goods and on businesses which can trade all over the world and particularly in Europe. We export more per head of the population than America, Japan or other countries. We are a trading nation and Europe is a very important market for us. If we are not in the European Union, we would not be able to have a say over what the rules of the single market are. That is the primary reason for being a member of the European Union."

He’s committing the mercantilist fallacy, that exports are either the point of trade or that they make us rich. No, it is imports that make us rich, exports being merely the shite we ship abroad to pay for them. We don’t actually care what the rules of the single market are, as long as we can buy what we wish from there. However, we do care very much about the fact that membership of that single market means that we are not allowed to buy what we wish from other countries around the world….something which makes us poorer.

Don’t they teach economics at Eton? There’s clearly not enough of it in a PPE from Oxford, anyway.

On cricket bats:

Until now, less space in the Laws of Cricket was dedicated to Law 6 (the bat) than to the timing of the tea interval. The old Law 6 was not merely succinct. It was also durable. Its stipulations concerning bat length (not more than 38 inches), width (a maximum of 4¼ inches) and that "the blade of the bat shall be made solely of wood" survived intact from the late 18th century, when a cad named White came in against Hambledon with a bat as wide as the wicket that was promptly banned.

Law 6 was changed after the Dennis Lillee aluminium bat controversy of 1979 to contain the phrase that "the blade of the bat shall be made solely from wood".

If they cannot get the truly important things, like cricket, correct, then how on earth can we trust them on ephemera, trivialities, like economics, politics or social policy?

Here.

Shows the difference between using cash and accrual accounting.

By the latter standards the US budget deficit for 2007 was $2,400,000,000,000.

Yes, $2.4 trillion. For one year.