Man’s insane

Stage 3 QE works alongside a transformation of savings. State subsidies to savings – that drive the Ponzi scheme arrangements we have – need to change. So pensions funds, to get tax relief, must save 25% of their new contributions in investments that create new green employment.

The function of investment is to create jobs now, is it?

Teaspoons all ’round then.

Now actually try thinking about this. Investment means buying machines ‘n’ stuff to get work done. That is, exactly the opposite of creating jobs. Because the machines are the automation of the work, aren’t they?

As I say, the man’s insane.

Err…..


QE had the aim of removing gilts from the market. The idea was that money would go as a result go into riskier assets, and new investment. It didn’t. It went into speculation.

Speculation is riskier assets, isn’t it?

Economic truth discovered!

Raymond Carter says:
November 27 2020 at 2:13 pm
Haven’t we had inflation without full employment in the past?

Richard Murphy says:
November 27 2020 at 4:01 pm
Yes, due to an external shock called oil

But that cannot be controlled using any economic policy

It just has to be worked through

Only oil can be that external shock creating inflation? Our word there, our word. That medal from Stockholm is imminent.

No one else has managed to explain stagflation so simply. Nor things like imported inflation as the FX rate slumps because of excessive money creation – just to give one other example.

Sam says:
November 27 2020 at 12:26 pm
Is the answer when faced with the usual retort “by creating more money you are pushing the value of sterling lower” that this mainly affects overseas investors or could it have an impact on imports for UK businesses and how is this offset?

Reply
Richard Murphy says:
November 27 2020 at 12:46 pm
Where is the evidence for this?

Err, Zimbabwe? Venezuela?

Seriously Joan, seriously

Imagine a man hitting his partner. The picture that comes to mind probably involves a scruffy individual, his hand raised and his face contorted with fury. We can all condemn that, can’t we? But what if the angry face is familiar, seen thousands of times in a very different context? If it belongs, say, to the world’s most famous and admired footballer, Diego Maradona?

Judging by the outpouring of grief that followed his death, at the age of 60, it seems too big an ask to admit that our heroes, especially our sporting heroes, have been credibly accused of domestic violence. Maradona’s face just doesn’t fit in that unpleasant picture – unless you’ve seen the video.

Gaaah! The entire world has been treated to endless repetitions of the fact that he was an entirely God Awful man who happened to have one, singular, immense talent.

Or haven’t you been paying attention?

Well, yes, hmmm

Of course it is possible for rape to take place within a relationship. And yet:

A mother whose rape claim was dismissed by a High Court judge with “outdated views” on sexual assault has won an appeal.

In January, Ms Justice Russell criticised a male colleague after he ruled that a woman had not been raped by her violent partner because she “took no physical steps” to stop him during sex.

Judge Robin Tolson QC had concluded, following a private family court hearing, that “because” the woman took “no physical steps” to stop him from raping her – “this did not constitute rape”.

That’s not actually the bit that makes me go “Hmm” at all.

The judge heard that the man and woman had separated more than three years ago, and that their son, now five, has remained in her care.

Family court litigation began after the man asked to be allowed to spend time with the boy.

The woman objected, and said the man had been controlling and had raped her.

That is the bit that makes me go “Hmm”.

Other military peeps know more than me

OK, so brave bloke, well done.

An off-duty soldier who tackled a gunman to the ground when he threatened shoppers in Southampton has been awarded a bravery medal.

Good, such things should be recognised.

Now, to try to read between the lines:

The officer in the Royal Logistic Corps, who currently serves as a Quartermaster in 101 Logistic Brigade,

I didn’t know that officers would or could be quartermasters. Sure, the function, but I thought the British army reserved that word for sergeants and WOs. Or maybe nomenclature has changed or summat. But this:

Capt Williams, 42, of Salisbury,

This isn’t a commentary on the bravery nor the individual. Rather, it’s an exercise in deductive reasoning. Or, even, the value of general knowledge.

Williams laddie was once Private Williams. To be a Captain – army style – at 42 is a dreadful record for a commissioned entrant. So dreadful that I’m not sure it is possible. Culling of someone promoted so slowly would already have happened. It’s not possible to join up old enough for that to be part of a normal promotion path either.

However, that looks about right for someone who joined as a squaddie, rose to sergeant, non com, WO etc and then made the leap to commissioned. The age of the Captain makes us think that he’s done the rising through the ranks thing. The very fact that he’s 42 and not a Major is what makes us think so.

I think at least, would argue that even if wrong the preponderance of probabilities would lead us to that conclusion.

No particular point to this other than that it’s fun to see what can be gleaned from odd bits of knowledge about the world out there – promotion prospects in the Army leading us to this conclusion about this medal earner.

New findings from British academia

Where would we be without all these people not investigating hovercraft, jet engines and nuclear power?

Via email:

The distress caused by the Coronavirus pandemic means parents should maintain the “vital tonic” of the Father Christmas myth for children this year, psychologist urges

For further information:

University of Exeter

Press Office

Sigh.

Weird, just weird

Stonewall about trans:

FACING DISCRIMINATION AND ABUSE

OK, no doubt it happens. We’d like less of it. This is, from their placing it on hte same page, clearly one of their examples of discrimination and abuse:

I was raped. Police kept referring to me as ‘she’ and ‘female’ and
using my birth name. The doctor they brought to examine me, made
me uncomfortable and continued calling me female.
Angus, 24 (Scotland)

Note that it’s not the rape itself which is being claimed as the discrimination and abuse. Yes, rape upon males is indeed possible and does happen. But again, that’s not, I think, what is being talked about here.

Someone vaginally raped is claiming abuse as the doctor referred to them as female.

Seriously?

Mobilise The Proletariat!

What does investing in a sustainable economy look like?

Most important, it is about making the UK’s 30 million buildings energy efficient. Triple glazing. Insulation. New boilers. Heat pumps. And solar power. All done street-by-street by a mass of newly trained people to do the job.

It’s as if he’s never heard of the Great Leap Forward. Or even the Australian Great Green Bodge Job.

Parse me this one

And unlike a household, the government does not need to worry about paying back debt when interest rates rise. Interests rates will only rise if economic growth returns. When it does, this will mean higher revenues in state coffers and, with higher employment, less public spending on safety nets for poorer households. At this point, taxes should go up, to ensure that corporations and the rich pay their fair share.

Tax revenue rises because economic recovery therefore tax rates should also rise in an economic recovery?

This is what they refuse to teach at Eton

“The Head Master felt that some of the ideas put forward in my lecture – such as the view that men and women differ psychologically and not all of those differences are socially constructed – were too dangerous for the boys to be exposed to,” Mr Knowland said.

The difference between Eton and the state sector being that in the state no single one of the teachers would believe that this idea was even worth presenting so obviously wrong it is.

Well, no, not really

Britain is lagging in international league tables for cancer survival, largely because so many cases are spotted so late.

As a result of Covid we’ve had estimates of increased mortality from delays in treatment. From memory, a month’s delay in treating (fill in forgotten name of cancer here) increase mortality by 9% or summat.

Hmm, OK. The NHS promise – not one that’s met – says your cancer should *start* being treated within 60 days.

It is actually vaguely possible that the reason the UK has bad cancer results is because the NHS is shit at treating cancer. On the grounds that Stalinist bureaucracies never do anything quickly.

Gosh, that’s exciting

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex celebrated their first Thanksgiving as a family in the US on Thursday, sitting down to homegrown vegetables from the garden.

A plate of veggies for thanksgiving. Yum!

It’s also grossly, pathetically, stupid. A £10 million estate used to grow 50 pence worth of vegetables is silly on a personal level. But it’s insane on a societal one.

America still does have those wide open spaces. You don’t really grasp how much of the damn place there is until you’ve driven it. And here we are, with people claiming virtue because they use the most expensive part of it, coastal California, to grow 50 pence worth of veggies that could – and should – be grown damn near anywhere.

The expense of that land showing us that lots of people want to have it, of course. Thus we should be putting that expensive resource to its highest value use, not some triviality like growing broccoli.

The broccoli should be grown in some arse end like Gilroy, even Santa Ynez, not Santa Barbara.

Being mawkish elsewhere

Don’t worry about the Puritans, we English didn’t like them much either. The Native Americans have a point. What you have turned Thanksgiving into, that celebration of family, is not so unusual across human societies. There are many analogues out there. What sets Thanksgiving apart is that you don’t just bend over backward to ensure, you positively insist, that no one break bread alone that day.

It is the most sweet, even glorious, aspect of your society. Please don’t ever lose it. To the matriarch near Lincoln, Nebraska: My apologies for not understanding before. Now I do, and from afar, I raise that slice of pumpkin pie to you and 330 million other Americans. That sharing of the cloak is always something to give thanks for.

This is fun

But despite the recent attention, some say the rise of Parler fits into the larger history of American conservatives and their relationship with the media.

“This follows a pattern of what the right wing has done [since] the rise of talk radio in the ’80s, and then through live cable TV, and then the rise of social media,” Lawrence Rosenthal, the chair of the University of California Berkeley’s Center for Right-Wing Studies, told Recode. “In each case, what you found is that the right wing gives up on participating in mainstream media and creates an alternative universe.”

Parler is just the latest iteration of this phenomenon, Rosenthal explained.

I guess that’s one way to put it.

As it’s grown, Parler has become a way station for hate speech and misinformation that Twitter and Facebook wouldn’t allow. The site is also where many Trump supporters are spreading the false narrative that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. The burgeoning influence of Parler is part of a broader trend of fringe outlets like One America News and Newsmax hoping to reel in an audience of Trump loyalists, especially after he leaves office.

Another might be that as the Woken SS take over a place then normies go off somewhere else.

Amazingly, he’s fighting the last war

But, as I have already noted, the assumptions that underpin this are that business and consumers spend, spend, spend from 2022 onwards and there is simply no evidence based on past economic recoveries, where caution persists for a long time after recovery begins, to suggest that this is likely.

His already noted part is a piece which looks at post-2008. That is, not past economic recoveries but the last economic recovery. Which is a pretty thin evidence base really, one time in one place.

Actual economists who opine on such things have pointed out – in fact good ones, like Krugman, were pointing this out in 2008 – that recessions following a Kaboom in the financial system – or accompanied by, or which cause, your taste there – take a long time to recover from. Recessions so unaccompanied do not.

He’s fighting the last war and only the last war, rather than looking at what economics and economist actually have to say. But then this is Snippa, isn’t it?

No Tom, this is what *you* want

The reality is that neither Sunak nor the Tories or Britain’s wider political class have woken up to the essential truth of the pandemic: Britain needs structurally higher government spending and that means permanently higher taxes, too.

This is the same thing Polly has been wailing about for decades. That Britain should have a larger state, paid for with more tax, like parts of Europe.

It’s a vision that the British haven’t bought into over those decades either. We do, after all, keep voting in people who don’t do it.

So who knows who is running this Plod scheme?

Members of the public will soon be able to directly upload to the police – for the first time – doorbell video footage of crimes, according to police chiefs.

Olivia Pinkney, the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s lead for local policing, said forces were aiming to have a standard online platform by next year that would allow crime victims to submit video when they reported an incident.

The move aims to capitalise on the explosion in video technology ranging from door bell cameras and dash cams in cars to CCTV and mobile phone images to enable the public to report crimes from thefts and burglaries to dangerous driving and anti-social behaviour.

Ms Pinkney said a pilot by her force with traffic offences drew 250 submissions from the public, of which a third resulted in police action.

It’s amazing what people on this blog know at times.

I’ve a piece of software lying around which would be a useful backbone for this system. Developed for the US military it was. The aim and idea being collection and monitoring of exactly this sort of input. It actually works right now too.

So, who should I go talk to?

We’ve been burying bodies for thousands of years

Surely – and as Mr. Venning said, the answer to any question which includes the word “surely” is “No” – peoplpe were aware of this?

As if the Danish government’s rushed decision to cull and bury more than 10 million minks wasn’t a grisly enough story, thousands of the animals’ bloated cadavers have begun to re-emerge from their shallow graves.

The phenomenon was reported by Denmark’s state broadcaster DR on Tuesday after mink carcasses were spotted popping up to the surface at a mass burial site at a military training field on Sunday.

“It is an extraordinary situation,” Thomas Kristensen, a press officer with Denmark’s National Police, which is responsible for the mink burials, told state broadcaster DR.

“In connection with the decay, gasses form, which cause the whole thing to expand a little, and then in the worst case they get pushed out of the ground.”

Bodies need to be buried deeply to stop this happening. That’s why it’s “six foot under”.

OK, doesn’t have to be six foot for a mink but the principle remains. We don’t use shallow graves for a reason.