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They’re insane, aren’t they?

Cheap phone calls for British holidaymakers were blocked by the EU in Brexit reset talks.

Southern European states, including Spain and Italy, derailed a bid by Sir Keir Starmer to drop roaming charges for UK tourists.

The EU, pushed by countries that attract millions of British tourists, refused to allow the UK back into a scheme that lets travellers use mobile data at local rates when abroad.

The rejection was a blow to Government negotiators hoping to reduce friction for holidaymakers.

When the EU first decided to scrap roaming charges in 2016, the government estimated it would save UK travellers £1.4 billion a year. Following Britain’s exit from the EU, most British providers now charge extra for bundles so that their customers can use mobile internet overseas.

But, but, what in buggery does that have to do with the European Union? With Britain’s relationship with 450 million people? With giving them all the fish? What is this to do with government at all?

Ah, but this is different, see?

For example, the tax bill on American universities on the interest that they earn on their endowment funds is going to increase from 1.4% to 21% and the only reason for that is the right wing hatred of liberal education in the USA, provided by universities like Harvard, right down to the local state university, if it has any funds invested in this way, all of whom are now subject to right wing hatred, because they quite rationally wish to include balanced discussion on what freedom might really represent in the USA, which the right wing wish to close down.

Spud wants to tax the income from wealth. But not the income from wealth flowing to people he politically agrees with. There’s a name for that sort of political partiality, no?

Odd

whilst simultaneously promoting the idea of English exceptionalism, which it emphatically disproved.

When you base your policy on these continuing stupidities,

Is England not different? Historically it has been, certainly. It’s possible to identify ways in which it still is different from many other places. If this were not so then that idea of promoting a tax all until the snot runs social democracy would not be such an uphill struggle, would it?

Note that I’ve not – not quite at least – said England is better. But that England is different from many other places seems to me to be a truth not an obvious stupidity.

Ahem

So, imagine you could ask a question that I could answer in five minutes or so. What would that be? Suggestions are welcome. We are genuinely looking for ideas.

If banks do not require deposits, do not need them, make no use of them, why do they pay interest on them?

Not that I’d expect it to be answered even if it were not posed by me.

Fairly strong claim

Roughly 80% of stay-at-home parents are mothers: cultural traditions that encourage women, and not men, to sacrifice their careers for caregiving, along with persistent wage inequalities that make women, on the whole, lower earners than their male partners, both incentivize women, and not men, to drop out of the workforce and stay home when they have children.

Differences in reaction to ickle ones are based purely upon culture and nothing more?

That would be…..odd. For such differences do seem to occur in many a species – maybe even all. True, not all – and yes, let’s mention the seahorse – have the biddy doing the childcare but there is often that sexual difference in who does.

So why is it that in humans it’s always the culture, never anything innate?

Interestink

The UK is becoming “the sick person of the wealthy world” because of the growing number of people dying from drugs, suicide and violence, research has found.

Death rates among under-50s in the UK have got worse in recent years compared with many other rich countries, an international study shows.

While mortality from cancer and heart disease has decreased, the number of deaths from injuries, accidents and poisonings has gone up, and got much worse for use of illicit drugs.

The trends mean Britain is increasingly out of step with other well-off nations, most of which have had improvements in the numbers of people dying from such causes.

The increase in drug-related deaths has been so dramatic that the rate of them occuring in the UK was three times higher in 2019 – among both sexes – than the median of 21 other countries studied.

So the UK is becoming more like the US in its pattern of deaths. Which means that it’s not the NHS v insurance based health care which causes the American pattern of death, right?

Causality

The downgrade sent the benchmark S&P 500 as much as 1pc lower in early trading, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite sank more than 1.4pc.

This led to the likes of Tesla and Apple falling by 4.8pc and 3.3pc, respectively, although they later trimmed the scale of their losses.

Might it be that it was falls in Apple and Tesla which reduced the indices?

A lot of sympathy with this

“We do, however, have significant concerns about the impact on doctor/patient confidentiality of the proposal in the Bill, which would introduce a mandatory duty to report consensual underage sexual activity whether or not there is any suggestion of abuse,” the statement said.

“We are strongly of the view that a doctor should only inform the police or social services of underage sexual activity where they have concerns that the young person is being abused.”

The submission said the Bill in its current form “would require doctors to report to the police or social services any disclosure of sexual activity between, for example, a 15-year-old and an 18-year-old, even if the relationship is consensual and there is no risk of harm present”.

It said: “It is common for young people under the age of 16 to be in consensual sexual relationships with people who are older (and frequently more than two years older) than themselves.”

It added that doctors should only have to report cases of suspected abuse.

Yes, yes, I know that someone under the age of consent cannot consent and all that.

And yet do we want some 15 year old shagging – at her request, even though we’re agreeing she doesn’t know enough to make the request – a 19 year old to be able to get the pill? Or, if he brings back some infection, treatment for that?

Slightly difficult, no?

Well, quite

European shoppers do not want to eat British sausages regardless of Sir Keir Starmer’s trade deal, the founder of The Black Farmer has said.

Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones, who sells a range of meat products under his brand, hit out at claims that the Prime Minister’s trade deal with the EU would deliver a major boost to British sausage manufacturers.

Mr Emmanuel-Jones said: “They didn’t take our sausages in great quantities in the first place, so there’s no win there. And actually, even burgers and a lot of the foods that we have in this country, they don’t eat in Europe, not on a big scale. So I don’t see that we’ve gained anything.”

The Europeans insist that sausages be made of meat. Even, at the posh end, from a named and known species.

This is more than just a joke too. British sausages have – up to – 12.5% breadcrumbs in them. It’s part of the recipe. That’s what holds the fats in as they cook and thereby strengthens the flavour. They’re also made to fry or roast/bake. They simply a different beast than most European types.

Another thing not grasped

44% goes to banks or finance organisations to supposedly fund social housing when these entities have absolutely no problem wth accessing capital in other ways. They have absolutely no requirement for funds raised in this way.

If social housing is to be let out at below market price then there’s a subsidy there. So, someone, somewhere along the way, has to provide the subsidy.

What is it about lower than market price that Spud cannot grasp?

Like rain on your wedding day….

Instead, what I’m really interested in is ways of thinking, and what PSR‘s comment made me think about. I suggest that one of the things that PSR has described in his comment is the difference between people who think in a linear fashion and those who think in a non-linear fashion, which, it appears to me, he does.

I am aware that I have thought in a non-linear fashion for decades. I have always considered this to be a considerable advantage. Most certainly, when I was selling accountancy and consulting advice, it provided me with an unambiguous competitive advantage that was frequently commented upon by my clients, and was the basis for their recommendation of my services to other people.

Man who cannot think gives us thousands of words of his thinking on how to think.

To remind. His claim is that Lloyds Bank pays out £25 billion a year in interest to depositors because…..well, he never does give a reason. Other than to insist they don’t need to.

This is what colonies are for

France is to build a €400 million US-style “super-max” prison for drug lords and Islamist terrorists in the heart of the Amazon jungle.

Gérald Darmanin, the hardline justice minister, said on Sunday that the facility would be located in Saint Laurent du Maroni in the overseas territory of French Guiana. It is the same region where the notorious Devil’s Island penal colony was situated and was the setting of the novel Papillon, which was later made into a Hollywood film starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman.

So. All we’ve got to do is change the status of South Georgia from a dependent territory (I think?) into a full and whole part of the UK and we can then build there. Because we’d not be sending people somewhere else. We would, like France, be sending them to a part of the UK which just happens not to be close to London.

The human rights lawyers would be defeated…

Added bonus – this could also be applied to asylum seekers and small boat characters….

The latest Green Party addition to our economy

It’s time for government to wake up and grasp what’s in front of its eyes: thousands of skilled and knowledgable workers – and a booming green energy industry just crying out for the government to tap into it. That’s why I’ve introduced the energy and employment rights bill to parliament: it would compel the government to work with unions and communities in order to secure British jobs and put the UK at the centre of the industries of the future. It would make big polluters pay for workers to learn new skills. And it would ensure that investment in the government’s new GB Energy supported jobs and industries here in the UK, rather than losing them abroad.

A Bill to set a timeline for the phasing out of UK oil and gas production and the decommissioning of related infrastructure; to require the Secretary of State to publish a plan for ensuring that oil and gas workers have access to appropriate redeployment or retraining opportunities, and to involve unions and communities in the production of this plan, which should include plans for funding; to make provision for the establishment of a training fund for workers in the oil and gas industry, to which oil and gas companies would contribute by paying a levy; to make provision for a proportion of workers’ wages to be guaranteed by the state for a defined period after they leave the oil and gas industry; to introduce sectoral collective bargaining in the energy industry; to extend legislation relating to pay and conditions for UK onshore workers to cover all offshore workers in the UK Continental Shelf and UK Exclusive Economic Area; to require GB Energy’s investments to support UK jobs; and for connected purposes.

Adding costs to an industry is a well known method of expanding that industry, no?

Dear God, and to think that this is an economics correspondent

When interest rates were at record lows of 0.1pc during the pandemic, the Bank earned far more on the returns from government bonds than it had to dish out in interest.

By the end of 2021, the Old Lady was in profit to the tune of £123.9bn.

But that was quickly eroded when interest rates started rising, with a “consistently higher Bank Rate” resulting in “large interest losses” of £18.5bn in the last financial year alone, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).

But that’s not all. The Bank is also actively selling its stockpile of gilts back to the market in a move called quantitative tightening (QT), crystallising billions of pounds of losses for the taxpayer.

Many economists, politicians and central bankers believe this is a mistake, as it means that some of the bonds Threadneedle Street bought during the crisis are being sold at knockdown prices.

In some of the most extreme cases, bonds bought for the equivalent of £1 have been sold for 28p.

These so-called “valuation losses” will dwarf the money being paid out in interest if the Bank continues to actively reduce its stockpile of gilts by around £48bn a year.

No. By definition the valuation losses equal the interest losses over the term of the bonds. Because that’s what is driving the current low capital values of the bonds – that their coupon is lower than the general interest rate.

That’s what the crystallising is – losses which are going to happen anyway are being crystallised into a current capital loss, today, rather than being an interest loss over the years.

The total cost to the taxpayer over the scheme’s lifetime is currently estimated at around £150bn by both the Bank of England and OBR. That’s the equivalent of a £5,000 tax on each household.

All of which is an interesting lesson for the MMT enthusiasts, no? We did just print money and go spend it. And look how cheap that is!

Again to translate

At least 236,500 properties across England and Wales, worth at least £64bn, are hidden behind these “opaque” structures, according to research by Transparency International.

The campaign group said this risked allowing wealthy individuals – including those linked to corruption – to shield their assets.

How can we expropriate the capitalists inless we have a little list. Comrade?

Allow me to translate Rhiannon for you

Modern parenting rejects abusive ways of punishing children. Will England listen?
Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

Older relatives might roll their eyes at this generation’s approach, but it is overdue in a country where smacking is still legal

I think smacking children is a bad idea. Therefore everyone else must do so too.

Little is as fascist as a liberal on the moral warpath….

Try this on for size

Foreign offenders jailed for crimes in the UK will be deported as soon as they are convicted in a bid to tackle prison overcrowding.

OK. Whoo hoo!

David Gauke, the former Tory justice secretary, who is heading the review, has also recommended giving ministers powers for earlier deportations of foreign criminals jailed for more than three years. There are 10,800 foreign prisoners – one in eight of all inmates – which costs taxpayers £580 million a year.

And the kicker?

Under the early removal scheme, deported foreign criminals do not have to serve any more prison time after they are returned to their home countries.

So, to recast this:

Foreign criminals to be released and sent home without serving time……nott quite so exciting now, eh?

Spud can’t even grasp GDP calculations

Let me take a simple example. Over 10% of the UK’s national income is supposedly made up of rent that people like me, who own their own house, whether with a mortgage or not, pay ourselves for the right to live in our own properties month in, month out.

Let me assure you of something. I do not pay myself rent to live in my own house. Nor does anybody else I know in the entire UK economy pay rent to live in their own house.

What’s even more important is that recording a transaction between a person and themselves is about as meaningful in economic terms as shifting a £10 note from your left pocket to your right pocket. It is utterly economically inconsequential, and yet, according to our Office for National Statistics, 10% of our national income is made up of this completely made-up transaction between one person and themselves.

This is ludicrous, and that is the consequence of making up economic data that does not follow the rules of double entry.

GDP (or GNI, whatever) is not recording transactions. It is attempting at lesat to measure the value add in the economy. Or, equally, production equals consumption equals incomes. By definition. So, is someone living in a house – a capital asset – that they own consuming housing services? Sure they are. Therefore we need to have that in our GDP.

Think fora moment. Imagine rental did not exist. Everyone lived in owner occupied. Now flip the economy and all rent. No owner occupied at all. Using Spud’s measurement those two economies are of different sizes. Consumption of housing is wildly different. But the value add – everyone gets housed – is the same. So, in measuring value add we’ve got to have owner occupied housing. We simply do.

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