Skip to content

The bit they never do the work upon

OK, super, lovely. Now, how do those investments in green and local things make money? What’s the return to the investment?

No, not what’s the benefit to society at large, to the cutlure, not even to the commissars who get to run it. What’s the return that the investors manage to capture? What’s the interest payment, the dividend, the profit stream, thrown off by those investments which then flows to the investors?

Without that there’s no investment to be made of course. Further, with that then why does there need to be any direction or forcing of investment?

Who pays how much to the investors for these investments? Solve that and you might actually solve the problem. But what’s the one thing they never do talk about?

Always difficult to tell

What the last line is going to be

There is, as Sir Michael Marmot argues, no reason for this. We could feed the people of the UK and the world appropriately. We could take people out of destitution. We would end the threat to people’s health from poor diets. We could save the cost of doing so in healthcare terms in all likelihood.

But we do not do that.

That is because big pharma does not want us to do so.

And it is because big sugar does not want us to do so.

Depends upon hte nutter but it could be the fault of the Tories or the Joos.

George Osborne bears the greatest responsibility

Ah, it’s the Tories today.

Now that foxing day is over

HM Revenue and Customs could be forced to repay almost £500m to Uber after a legal victory over the taxman by a rival minicab app.

Memory’s a bit hazy as I don’t really pay attention to Jololyon all that much. But wasn’t he behind that Uber case over VAT?

Uber has argued that VAT should only be applied on the fees the company charges drivers, typically 25pc of a journey, while HMRC has said it should be applied to the full cost of a ride.

In the tax tribunal, Judge Greg Sinfield ruled that “mobile ride-hailing services” such as Bolt should be treated under the Tour Operators Margin Scheme, designed for holiday companies such as travel agents.

The ruling states that the company should only pay VAT on the company’s own fees, rather than the entire journey cost.

Seems reasonable enough to me even as I admit to no expertise at all in the law.

Those costs of the minimum wage

Of course, as we know, the true minimum wage is $0 an hour.

But another cost:

Some of Britain’s biggest food outlets risk excluding elderly customers as they turn to self-service kiosks to cut costs, campaigners have warned.

Fast food chains including McDonald’s, Leon and Subway are using self-service as a way for customers to order as wage costs rise and the hospitality industry grapples with a shortage of staff.

Almost all of McDonald’s 1,450 restaurants now have self-service kiosks.

But campaigners have said they risk alienating elderly diners who may not be able to use the technology.

Now, it’s possible to think that that’s a bit of a whinge and you’re probably right. But it will be true, at the margin, for some. And thus a cost of a rising minimum wage will be some oldsters unable to have a Big Mac.

Might even be a fair cost, a reasonable cost, but it will be a cost all the same.

Do so love a toff

Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has been crowned the most popular Conservative backbencher in an annual survey by a leading Tory publication.

The former business secretary pipped Miriam Cates, a rising star from the 2019 intake, and Suella Braverman in the contest.

He won the most votes from readers of Conservative Home, which is often described as the Tory grassroots bible.

The fun thing is that Jacob’s not really a toff. Plays one very well indeed of course, but it is rather a play. Pops was a very bright lad on the make and did very well indeed at it. But it takes a few generations to create a proper toff in the English class system.

It’s glorious, innit?

Despite all that is going on in the world, Labour thinks that sweet shops are the big issue that it needs to tackle, and that this issue was worth a Christmas press release.

Talk about distraction activity.

The sweetie shops story is actually one of tax evasion. Not even avoidance, full on evasion.

Leave a shop empty for long enough and you’ve got to pay the rates on it – landlords don’t like that. So, often enough it’s possible to get a shop on a short term rental nice and cheap – the landlord doesn’t get much rent but also doesn’t have to pay those rates.

The sweetie shop gets cheap rent – but does have to pay those rates. But if you fold the Ltd company quick enough, shuffle the assets through a pre-pack, then you can – often enough – avoid paying those rates too. So, you’ve not a near free shop on Oxford St from which to rooks the tourists.

This is not some secret, this is written about in the national press. But that bloke who has spent two decades as a tax campaigner thinks it’s just a distraction, right?

Eh?

It is prejudice for those in countries like the UK to think of migrants as invaders of our space when for centuries people from this country claimed those migrant’s space – and in too many cases, their ancestors – as our own, when that was simply untrue.

Right, so when we claimed their psace we were wrong.

Cool.

But now they’re claiming our space we’re still wrong?

Oh.

How glorious is Uruguay’s renewables revolution!

The Guardian:

Uruguay’s green power revolution: rapid shift to wind shows the world how it’s done

Erm, well, sorta.

An alternative energy source such as hydropower is vital to plug gaps in a renewable grid as wind and solar are intermittent.

Yes, it is. So, how much?

Installed electricity capacity in Uruguay was around 2,500 MW (megawatts) in 2009 and around 2,900 MW in 2013. Of the installed capacity, about 63% is hydro, accounting for 1,538 MW which includes half of the capacity of the Argentina-Uruguay bi-national Salto Grande. The rest of the production capacity is mostly thermal and a small share of wind and biomass.

OK, old numbers, but effectively they’re running a hydro electricity system with wind on top. Fine, works well etc.

Anyone think the greens will let us have 50 to 60% of ‘leccie from dams?

Important notice for Spud

“today’s rapidly falling inflation is insufficient to prove that it was always going to fade by itself. What matters is whether it would be even higher now had central banks not tightened monetary policy” –

There is, of course, a joy to Spud’s view here. Standard analysis says that when inflation arrives, do this. So, inflation arrived, they did this, inflation slowed. Spud takes this as proof absolute that doing this was not necessary. In fact, Spud has argued himself into the corner of insisting that the standard view must be wrong because it worked.

Astonishing, just remarkable

The Countess of the estate where Downton Abbey is filmed has criticised the Government’s rewilding policies, saying people “cannot eat trees”.

Lady Carnarvon, the 8th Countess of Carnarvon and chatelaine of Highclere Castle, near Newbury in Berkshire, said it was wrong to blame farm animals for contributing towards climate change and the focus should be on other factors harming the environment.

Writing for The Telegraph, she said that while rewilding schemes play a part in the countryside, the focus should be on growing more food in the UK and becoming less reliant on imports.

Can’t understand it at all. Landowner says we should adopt policies which made land worth more.

Umm, no, really, just no

More than 70 children aged three and four were sent to the controversial Tavistock transgender clinic, statistics have shown.

In total, 382 children aged six and under were referred to the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in north London.

I adamantly refuse to believe that a child of three or four understands sex enough to be troubled by such things.

I do agree, absolutely, that boys and girls tend to be different. Anyone who has ever been around any number of children knows that. But being sufficiently self-conscious to decide upon one side or the other? Not a chance. #

No such thing as a trans-toddler.

He’s getting confused inside his own rant

Thirdly, what this claim shows is that the commonplace approach of the neoliberal, which is to take a micro situation and extrapolate it to the macro environment, implicitly assuming that this is a valid basis for reasoning, is totally misplaced. Unfortunately, almost all microeconomic theory is created on this basis, with the exception of things like modern monetary theory and the economics that people like Steve Keen promote.

What he means is that he doesn’t want macroeconomics to have a microeconomic base. There’s some level of aggregation where entirely different rules come into play that is. The reason he – and Keen etc – want this is because it’s blindingly obvious that a lot of mocroeconomic observations are true. But that they militate against the sort of macroeconomics that they want to do. Therefore it must be true that the true microeconomics – marginal tax rates, the absence of central knowledge, etc etc – must be somehow wrong at the level of aggregation they want to work at.

Unfortunately, almost all microeconomic theory is created on this basis,

He actually means, unfortunately almost all macroeconomic theory is created….he manages to get tied up in his own rant.

It’s tax evation wot does it though, innit?

Colonialism, tax evasion by multinationals, the disgusting racism of the terms of trade:

Nigeria’s former central bank governor has been accused of stashing £543 million in UK accounts and stealing £5 million from the vaults of the bank.

Godwin Emefiele, who took control of the central bank of Africa’s largest economy in 2014, kept 593 bank accounts in Britain, the US and China, according to an investigation that began after he was suspended in May.

If only those governments of the newly emerging nations had more power and more money then everything would be better, right?

My word, this is a surprise

Astonishing:

My whole thing was, I want it to be janky,” says Boots Riley, talking about the ramshackle imperfection of his show I’m A Virgo. “Everything is too smoothed out. You make it a little janky and jangling and people feel it more.” Among this year’s slick small-screen dramas, Riley’s I’m a Virgo sticks out like its main character: a 13ft-tall Black teenager. The premise alone is outlandish enough; what Riley and his team do with it, and how they do it, make I’m a Virgo one of the most bracingly original things on our screens this year or any other. And one of the most revolutionary: the show culminates in a full-on, top to bottom critique of capitalism

The Guardian praises some little oddity which critiques capitalism. Be still my beating heart….

Might solve itself actually

But experts say new net zero rules intended to boost the eco-credentials of office blocks, and the continued trend of working from home, means the outlook is bleak.

“Valuations have been hugely affected by the uncertainty of future office demand and ESG considerations,” Greenshields says.

New rules came into force in April requiring all office buildings to have an energy efficiency rating of at least E in order to be let out. The minimum threshold will ratchet up quickly over time, which will require many owners to sink more money into upgrades.

That which doesn’t – or can’t – meet the new standards removes from the market, that then right sizes the remaining supply to demand.

Maybe – and it’s a crazy way to do it too, but it could happen….

Rather like unemployment and a declining economy. If GDP falls then, in theory, all could take a small paycut. Or some could take a 100% pay cut by being unemployed. All office space could decline in value, or some to zero……

Snigger

The numbers of families without a permanent home and in short-term housing, whether hotels and B&Bs or temporary rental properties, has hit a record high this year, with the latest statistics showing it now affects 121,327 children, according to data collated by the House of Commons library.

Other figures, also compiled by the library, show that councils across England have 261,189 homes that are classed as long-term vacant, meaning they have been empty for six months or more.

OK, so more empty homes that houeholds needing one.

Helen Morgan, the Lib Dems’ housing spokesperson, said: “It is heartbreaking to think so many children are going without a permanent place to call home this Christmas, while thousands of houses lie empty.

“It’s a sign of just how broken the housing market has become under this Conservative government. For years the government has utterly failed to build the social and affordable housing we need, leaving far too many people without a secure home.

“The Liberal Democrats would tackle the housing crisis, giving local authorities the powers they need to take on big developers and deliver the affordable homes that their communities need.”

Erm, isn’t the first contention the opposite of the second?

#We have enough houses but they’re badly allocated is v different at least from we need more houses, no?

This doesn’t matter, really, it doesn’t

President Xi has ambitions to challenge the global dominance of the dollar. One way to do that would be to start trading oil and gas in renminbi.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude oil exporter, has traded oil entirely in dollars since 1974. But talks about pricing sales to China, Saudi’s largest trading partner, in renminbi have been accelerating.

Given that we’ve got large and liquid FX markets what the oil is priced in doesn’t matter a damn. Takes 10 minutes and 0.01% of thje amount to transfer £ to $ and so on.

Sure, if your currency doesn’t have a liquid market – like those of countries that try to peg the value – then you’ve a problem. But those problems aren’t because4 oil is in $, it’s because you’ve a pegged currency and thus no liquid market.

Err, yes?

Strip out the bit about “our fans”, whose wishes have been ignored for the best part of 18 years, and the essence of the strategic review was laid bare: a money grab, designed not to “enhance the club’s future growth” but to swell the bank balance of six siblings in Florida. Bottom line over scoreline, as some staff at United describe the Glazer era. It was ever thus.

The Glazers are due to pocket over £500 million from the sale of a 25 per cent stake in United to the Ineos billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe, with the other half of the £1.03 billion purchase price going to other shareholders.

Put another way, that is a similar figure to the debt burden that was loaded on to the club when the Americans completed their hostile takeover in 2005, and which has remained largely unchanged ever since.

It’s a business. And?