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Yes, this does meet the test of fascism

Scottish lairds will be ordered to break up their estates into smaller parcels during sales under plans to reverse the country’s heavily concentrated patterns of land ownership.

A land reform bill proposes introducing rules that could force someone selling an estate larger than 1,000 hectares (2,471 acres) to divide it into smaller lots, if it is was needed to increase the number of people owning land or living in the area.

The Scottish Land Commission, a government quango, has found that Scotland has Europe’s most concentrated pattern of land ownership, predominantly in the hands of hereditary owners often known as lairds, as well as farmers, heritage bodies, forestry businesses and grouse moor managers.

OK, blah, blah etc. But here:

Properties would be subject to a “transfer test” by a new land and communities commissioner, who would join the Scottish Land Commission but answer directly to ministers in Edinburgh. Ministers would then decide the size of each piece of land.

You’ve just put the sale and purhase of a piece of land right into the middle of electoral politics. The politically connected will find their purcahses sail through, those not so connected will not.

This is fascist economics – not fascism, for it’s sans the spiffy uniforms. But fascist economics. Nominally a private and capitalist economy but wholly controlled by politics.

So here’s a Nesrine Malik column to look forward to

Twice a week, a group of women gather together in a nondescript house in Ardamata, on the outskirts of Geneina in Sudan’s West Darfur state, to tell their stories to each other, cry, and drink coffee.

The women, who work or used to work in education, are all survivors of an ethnically targeted campaign of rape and sexual abuse carried out by fighters from Arab militias backed by the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group on 5 November, after the fall of the army garrison in Ardamata.

Most of the rape campaign’s victims were from the Masalit community, a darker-skinned ethnic African tribe that made up a majority in Geneina before they were largely driven out during fighting that began in April last year.

Given that she is Arab Sudanese she will be exploring this bit of oppression from her own hinterland, yes? Rather than just the usual chuntering on about how Jews and Whitey can just be so awful, y’know?

The joy here is that’s it’s so mechanical

Watch: Meghan bakes and poses in ballgown to debut lifestyle business
American Riviera Orchard website linked to claims the Duchess will position herself as rival to ‘domestic goddesses’ such as Martha Stewart

Yes, of course marketnig is a business. Yes, images are constructed, positions artfully defined. But there’s usually something there first. Some actual knowledge, ability. They’re not grown out of whole cloth.

Megan’s convinced it works the other way, that it’s all and entirely artifice only.

You know, like some Teenage Trot believing prices are things randomly assigned etc.

Sigh

From a PR email:

Forget port-swilling Victorians: 1 in 40 Brits have gout and cases in young adults have increased 30%

If you thought gout was an outdated condition affecting portly, red-faced Victorians, think again.

Sigh. It was Georgians – in those cartoons etc – who were always portrayed with gout. Not Victorians.

I’ve heard one story that Pitt would down 6 bottles – half a case – after dinner. Which seems excessive even for that time period.

This is fun

Currently it is UK domiciles who pay inheritance tax but once the domicile status is abolished, the Government wants the levy to apply to UK residents who have been in the country for longer than 10 years.

What makes it difficult to move abroad and not pay inheritance tax is that domicile status. Residence, thus tax on income, is relatively easy to dodge. Dimicile, thus inheritance, much more difficult.

But if the domicile status is being abolished, then dodging inheritance by moving abroad becomes much, much, easier.

Or so I would logically think at least.

Well, guess the money has to go somewhere

Victims of the London Capital & Finance (LCF) scandal have demanded Google pay back tens of millions of pounds that was spent on misleading digital advertising to promote the alleged “Ponzi scheme”.

The High Court heard last week that a marketing agency working on behalf of LCF paid Google more than £20m to promote its financial products.

Many of the 11,500 people who put money into LCF did so after discovering it through Google. LCF, which sold “mini-bonds” to investors, raised more than £237m before it collapsed in 2019.

But if 10% of the funds raised are spent on just one part of the marketing programme then imagine how high the internal rate of return has to be to privide a margin for investors.

Assuming it’s on the up and up in the first place of course.

A very believable story, don’t you think?

The toothbrushes were made in China and supplied to Aldi, with payments from the retailer due to go into an account controlled by Synergy, so that the finance company could be paid back.

But Aldi were provided with the wrong bank details and payments for more than €500,000 went into another business account controlled by Mrs Perhar instead. Mrs Perhar then went on to pay out around €329,644 from the account to meet other “urgent” debts, the court heard.

Subsequently, on 5 June last year, she received a demand for repayment of the loan, plus interest, on the basis that she had breached the terms of her company’s borrowing agreement.

Just three hours later, Mr Slinger, acting as a secured creditor, put The Sustainable Bathroom Company into administration.

Mrs Perhar is now suing, claiming that Synergy had “approved” her making the payments, rather than transferring the money to her lender.

She told Mr Justice Michael Green that she believes Synergy had no legal right to put her company into administration and that Mr Slinger appointed administrators for “vindictive” and “improper” reasons – allegations which his barrister James Morgan KC told the judge are “hotly contested.”

This is the bit that stnads out for me. “to meet other “urgent” debts” Oh Aye?

Lenders are going to agree to allow the cash they’ve a claim to to move off to where they’ve not got a claim on it?

Eh?

So, for example, the price that we pay for much of the software that we use represents a rent. Now that annual charging is commonplace the pretence that it is otherwise has been abandoned. Nothing about the pricing of these products accords with standard microeconomic theory on pricing: it is simply maximised in the interests of the greed of both the senior management of the enterprises involved, and their owners.

In what way does Microsoft 365 violate microeconomic principles of pricing?

It is the extraction of rents that is doing four things in our economy.

Third, it is destroying innovation of any sort, as the intention of the rentier is to protect what they have, not to create something new.

Whut? The last few decades have seen the internet, the web, mobile phones, smartphones, earch and email. We’re on hte cusp pof whatever it is that AI might bring us. And the fool says that innovation is being destroyed?

How does Spud remember how to breathe?

Ahhh….

So it’s not about slavery, is it?

Caribbean nations are set to demand that Britain make reparations for indentured labour in addition to slavery, in a major expansion of the campaign to address colonialism.

Countries that have pushed for payments on slavery are now planning to seek reparative justice surrounding the 500,000 indentured workers shipped from India to work on sugar plantations after African slaves were freed.

It’s about having had the temerity to leave our isles and go to other places. We should all have stayed home, obviously.

We are going to be so lucky

The new book from Smurf:

In that case, let me start with some suggestions as to the arguments that are wrong. There could be a long list of these. I am not convinced that will help anyone, so I am working on the idea of there being just three that I wish to tackle.

When it comes to microeconomics my bête noire is that markets deliver optimal outcomes for society and that, as a result, government interference must be minimised at all times.

On macroeconomics, the argument needing to be addressed might be the household analogy, which is the mechanism used to ensure that impoverished microeconomic thinking dominates macroeconomic analysis as well, wholly inappropriately.

Then there is the question of human motivation, the understanding of which is necessary if we are to suggest how the economy should work. The current assumption that pervades society is that greed ultimately motivates all human actions. I disagree.

One and three are wrong, not believed by any economist. That is, what Smurf believes economists believe is not what they do. On two the household analogy doesn;t lead to micro- impositions on macro-. So that’s wrong too.

Gonna be a joy this next one, no?

The last line is missing here

My suggestion is a simpler one. If you really think that being Chancellor is going to be so difficult that you have to talk about it all the time then you’re not up to the job .

No one pretends that such a role is ever going to be easy. In that case what it requires is that the person willing to undertake it have the confidence to take on the task.

I’m not asking for the self-confidence that tips into arrogant foolishness. We all know the risks in that.

Instead, what is required is that quiet self-confidence that competence delivers.

Rachel Reeves clearly thinks she lacks that because of her perpetual references to the difficulty of the task. It really does make me wonder whether she is fit to undertake it.

And therefore arise Lord Smurf, the peer to save us in our hour of need…..

Possibly…..

What I will note is that this is happening at the same time as the Tory establishment is very obviously collapsing. So too, though, is Labour which has abandoned everything it seems to stand for, leaving the much of England, at least, without any realistic left-of-centre option available in elections at present.

….England doesn’t desire a centre left option?

I mean, could be. Politicians follow what they think will get them elected and perhaps it really is true that the English – as opposed to the Celts – are further to the right than the current left of centre?

So, err, umm?

The Labour party leader slashed the clean energy policy to just £4.7bn per year, but kept plans to invest £7.3bn in a National Wealth Fund to help create jobs in a zero-carbon economy.

This includes investment in carbon capture and storage, floating offshore wind farms and green steel across Britain, creating thousands of jobs for plumbers, electricians, engineers and technicians.

Anyone think that carbon capture, floating offshore wind, will actually be profitable? Without the externalities being included that is, profitable on a straight financial basis? Then this isn’t investing through a wealth fund, this is buying public goods with public money.

Buying public goods with public money is fair enough as an idea – depends what’s being bought for how much – but it’s not a wealth fund.

Green steel is, of course laughable. Because we’ve already done that, they’re paying a £billion to the two blast furnace sites to install EAFs. There, that’s already done.

Still not worth it

Extra virgin olive oil, a staple in the Mediterranean diet, used to be commonly found for around €5 a litre (£4.26) but now can cost up to €20.

Greece has also reported theft of olives in the groves. Panagiotis Tsafaris, an olive producer in the southern Peloponnese peninsula, has been robbed twice, with thieves using sticks at night to rake off the olives.

In some cases, entire branches are sawed off and loaded on to trucks for processing elsewhere.

The labour that goes into harvesting olvies means that it’s just not worth it at all.

There are machines used in big groves. But picking and then processing (you don’t just bung them in an oil extractor) by hand takes a ludicrously long time.

Authorities have also been cracking down on criminal organisations fraudulently using cheap vegetable oils to dilute what is being marketed as extra virgin.

That does make money, yes.

Linguistic complaint etc

Asylum seeker who sold prostitutes under Home Office’s nose
A Thai applicant, Saranwee Kwanpetch, who was supposed to be monitored is accused of exploiting vulnerable women with impunity

He’s running a website flogging tart services at £150 an hour in Mayfair.

Pimps don’t sell birds. The entire point is that you don’t wrap them up and take them home forever.

Quite apart from whether high end escorts are being exploited or not.

Aww, how cute

Last week the six biggest operators – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft and ByteDance – were forced to toe the line on competition, advertising, interoperability and more. It was a gamechanger

Apparently passing a bit of regulation solves global problems.

The act imposes serious obligations: companies will have to allow third-party apps and app stores on their platforms; provide transparent advertising data; allow users to easily uninstall pre-installed software or apps; enable interoperability between different messaging services, social networks, and other services, allowing users to communicate seamlessly across platforms; and be more transparent about how their algorithms rank and recommend content, products and services.

It also prohibits certain practices by gatekeepers: favouring their own services over third-party ones, for example; engaging in self-preferential activities; and using private data from business users to compete against them. In other words, an end to tech business as usual.

The major effect so far – for me at least – is that Google Maps is no longer clickable from the Google search page. That’s improved my life no end.

Twattery.