Skip to content

November 2018

Dear God these people are idiots

An analysis released this week by the property firm Savills spelled out just one of the reasons why. A property downturn could, it estimated, reduce the number of affordable homes being built by a quarter. When prices fall, developers’ profits shrink and they retreat from the market. And when developers stop building, promises to stop future buyers being locked out of the market by building 300,000 new homes a year aren’t worth the manifestos they were written on.

If every home in the country has just become 30, 50% more affordable, why worry about how many affordable houses are being built?

Guess what calculation we won’t see here?

But now, Beefeaters from the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace and Kensington Palace could vote to strike for the first time in 55 years in a row over pensions.

Historic Royal Palaces (HRP) employees, including Jewel House Wardens and other workers, who have been affected by the closure of their pension will be balloted on strike action from Friday, November 30, which could result in a walkout.

Unions claim changes will mean members’ final salary pensions will be replaced by an inferior plan

What is the value, as a percentage of their annual pay, of the accrual of that final salary pension?

It’ll be an eye popping number and one that rather puts the lie to he idea that the public sector is underpaid.

Business rates on pagan burial grounds

We both know and like Tim Daw around here.

A farmer who built the first new long barrow tomb in the UK in more than 5,000 years has been told that he must pay thousands of pounds in business rates on it.

Tim Daw, the owner of the burial ground used by Pagans, has been told by the Valuation Office Agency that he must pay between £4,500 to £5,000 a year in business rates for his burial mound where people pay to inter the ashes of their loved ones.

Long barrows were in widespread use in the early Neolithic period and examples still exist today, but the burial method fell out of use.

Usually, church graveyards and burial grounds are exempt from the tax as they are seen as places of worship. But Mr Daw has been told that his long barrow is a commercial storage facility that must pay the tax, as it falls above the rateable value on a business property of £12,000.

Mr Daw, from Devizes, Wiltshire, said the decision means mourners visiting his tomb will have to “pay to pray” and that the move discriminates against non-Christian forms of worship.

The interesting part is, well, how have they defined that value? Given that it’s the only one what comparator have they used to work it out?

Interesting

Rapist fathers should not have rights over their victims’ children

Presumably they don’t have the CSA after them to pay either?

Or doesn’t it work like that? We’re to create a class of fathers who must hand over the cash but have no other rights are we?

It’s not waste, you idiot

Charity shops are being flooded with poor-quality clothes that they have to turn away, because of fast fashion, the head of the environment select committee has said.

Mary Creagh, Labour MP and chair of the Environmental Audit Committee said the fashion industry is failing to cut waste, leading to tons of clothes clogging up landfills.

She explained: “the whole industry is based on us buying more than we need, and not valuing an item of clothing when it comes to the end of its life.”

Things that people desire are not waste. It’s their utility that matters, not what you think they should value.

Quite masterly trolling here

Supporters of Margaret Thatcher as the new face of the £50 note have received a boost after she was placed on the longlist of candidates by the Bank of England.

It had been thought that the former prime minister would fail to make the cut, after it was announced that the Bank was looking only for people with a scientific background.

But Baroness Thatcher had been a scientist in her early career, and had worked on developing emulsifiers for ice-creams for Joe Lyons foods.

She has been credited with helping develop Mr Whippy ice cream, though it is disputed whether she was on that particular team at the company while it was being made.

Masterful. Congratulations to the troll who made that decision.

Sounds like the system is working then

Third, it is that the accounts that the profession produces are not fit for most purposes, precisely because they are only designed to assist those deciding whether to supply capital to a company or not, and nothing else is considered.

They’re designed to do this, they do this. What’s the problem?

That a Senior Lecturer at Islington Polytechnic does not like this isn’t a problem with the system now, is it?

The political extinction of a plurality of the population

Isn’t this a lovely thing to wish for?

One is Flip Chart Rick who wrote this yesterday:

I will never get behind Brexit. I will have to accept it if it happens but I will never be reconciled to it. It is a stupid idea. I will never forgive the people who took us down this road. I will do whatever I can to bring about their political extinction.

That seems like a fair summary to me.

Isn’t that nice? A plurality of the country should be politically exterminated? Because wrongthink, you know.

They’re lying obviously

A report based on science from the Met Office and around the world sets out a range of climate scenarios over the next century to help homes and businesses plan for the future.

Even in the lowest-emission scenario, average annual temperatures are expected to be up to 2.3 degrees Celsius (36.14°F) higher by the end of the century.

In the highest-emissions scenario, summer temperatures could be up to 5.4C (41.72°F) higher by 2070 and winters up to 4.2C (39.56°F) higher.

36 oF? I think not.

But also that higher estimate depends upon the idea that RCP 8.5 will happen. Which it won’t. For we really do know this one thing about climate change, that RCP 8.5 will not happen. We’ve already done the work to make sure that it won’t.

Yes, I know, you’ll tell me that I shouldn’t be taking any of it seriously. But still, it does annoy that people continue to alarm us with something we know, absolutely, isn’t going to happen.

A strange theory

We seem to have more reports of whale beachings and strandings than we used to. This could be because the modern world is distracting them, undersea noise perhaps.

It could also be because there are more whales around. We stopped hunting in any volume what, 50 years ago? We might this be returning to the “natural” level of strandings.

Anyone know which is the correct answer here?

This could be interesting

Suppliers to the steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta’s rapidly growing empire have warned they are struggling to get credit insurance and are owed substantial sums.

Five companies that supply goods and services to parts of the Gupta Family Group (GFG) Alliance’s British operations told The Sunday Times they were struggling to secure payment from the steel, commodities and energy conglomerate.

He’s been spending a fortune in borrowed money buying up marginal metals assets. Credit insurers refusing to insure is the first sign that it’s not working.

No government at all is ever a functioning one

What is extraordinary about this is that the UK has not even got the option of crashing out of the EU whilst keeping any pretence of having a functioning government, if the ability to enforce the law and collect tax owing is indication of that, on which I think most would agree.

So, to the man who insists that the tax gap is £120 billion. Being able to collect tax due is the definition of a functioning government. Which the UK government currently does not do. Therefore, by this definition, the UK government is not a functioning one.

And Brexit is going to change this how?

Sure, there’s an answer to this. Which is that a functioning government is one which collects the tax due which is worth collecting. But that inevitably means a tax gap. Which isn’t something Spudda is likely to agree should happen either.