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It takes considerable inability to get so much, so wrong, so often, but …. has achieved it.

Spud, not April 1 2024.

16 thoughts on “In Memoriam”

  1. Yesterday he claimed coffee production was down 20% in SE Asia due to climate change (drought, rain whichever), and the price had jumped 50%.
    Other things being equal then the growers are gaining 20% more income.
    So:
    +50%price – 20%lessproduced = +20%salesincome
    Swap the -20 to the other side and divide by 10 and we have
    5 = 2 + 2
    Arithmetic doesn’t work like that, but I thought it rather elegant.

    The mistake Spud made though is that if growers are better off then the cause is weather. If they are worse off, the cause is climate.

  2. Bloke in North Dorset

    Completely OT.

    I have only myself to blame. After recently bragging that we’d never had a dishwasher fail our failed last night, right in the middle of the final wash before we head off for a few weeks touring the west coast of Scotland on our motorhome.

  3. if growers are better off then the cause is weather. If they are worse off, the cause is climate.

    A quick google finds the cause of the reduced crop is El Nino making it drier in Indonesia, so it is weather and not climate. And reported as such by Bloomberg and other media (!)

  4. If it’s Spud being quoted there, he can’t even get his snide comments right
    The inability to get things wrong implies the subject invariably is correct.

  5. @BiND: take the dishes with you and let the rain wash them clean.

    Anyway, you’ve maybe picked the wrong month. The weather in the West Highlands tends to be best in May/early June when the easterlies blow and you enjoy the ‘rain shadow’ effect: April is relatively dry too, I’ll grant you, but a bit cooler. May the weather gods smile on you.

    P.S. For obvious reasons I refer to those winds as the Viking Winds but to my disappointment nobody seems to have picked up on that insightful phrase. People, eh?

  6. More chillingly is the latest post, ominously entitled ‘126,245’

    for anyone on this blog:

    There is money left. Labour is just choosing not to access it, which is precisely why I am so annoyed with them.

    Despite taxes being at the highest level for decades his mantra remains – the hard worker must pay more to subsidize the indolent.

    As Bruce Dickinson once said:

    ‘The evil that men do lives on and on’

  7. @Bongo

    “Other things being equal then the growers are gaining 20% more income”
    … “Arithmetic doesn’t work like that”

    Initial price = 100 (say)
    Initial volume = 100 (“)
    Initial value = 100 x 100 = 10,000

    Final price = 1.5 x 100 = 150
    Final volume = 0.8 x 100 = 80
    Final value = 150 x 80 = 12,000

    => “Other things being equal then the growers are gaining 20% more income”

  8. Pass the fvcken’ sick bag:

    Jayne Samuel-Walker says:
    April 3 2024 at 8:21 am
    Richard, yours is the voice of sanity which cuts through the madness, thank you.

    Tim Kent says:
    April 3 2024 at 9:27 am
    Many thanks.
    Echoing Jayne, yours is one of very few voices of sanity.

    Werner White says:
    April 3 2024 at 9:57 am
    Thank you for your tireless work Richard. You provide evidence based critique and evidence based solutions. You have referenced Robert Reich a few times. He has a similar approach. Yesterday he offered a very interesting insight as to why like you he posts every day…….because it matters.

    Tony_B says:
    April 3 2024 at 12:13 pm
    RM, you are one of the few sane and comprehensible voices.

  9. I sneeze in threes

    O/T, in case you missed this intersectional bingo winner.

    “ Lesbian couple snub Jewish sperm donor over Gaza war……..

    A Jewish sperm donor has spoken out after he said he was snubbed by a lesbian couple after the war in Gaza.

    Jay Lazarus, a married, gay hairdresser from Perth, said he had “connected deeply” with the Queenslanders after deciding to become a sperm donor in October 2022 to help other same-sex couples start a family.“

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jewish-sperm-donor-shunned-antisemitic-lesbians-6vc2zprc2#:~:text=A%20Jewish%20sperm%20donor%20has,sex%20couples%20start%20a%20family.

  10. Spud is of course being duplicitous in his report. Its title is ‘Taxing Wealth’ and that and his headline figure of c£170bn (or whatever it is) is what will get any headlines but of that amount, £100bn has nothing to do with taxing wealth, it is the amount he intends to appropriate from existing ISA and pension funds so that instead of being invested where the contributors wish, it’s invested in whatever wet dream fantasy Spud has about where it should be invested.

    My guess is that no matter what he did, he couldn’t get the amount of extra tax as high as he wanted, so just tacked on an extra £100bn diverted investments to make the final number more impressive.

  11. What does Richard Murphy spontaneously combusting have in common with Citizen Kane?

    “Roast spud”.

  12. Dennis, A Wee Bonny Lad If You Squint Hard Enough

    After recently bragging that we’d never had a dishwasher fail our failed last night, right in the middle of the final wash before we head off for a few weeks touring the west coast of Scotland on our motorhome.

    Not really sure which is worse, the dishwasher failing or the trip.

    Inclined to think it’s the trip.

  13. Bloke in North Dorset

    dearime,

    “ May the weather gods smile on you.”

    Thanks you. Wifey is busy in May and we want to avoid the midges, for obvious reasons.

    “ For obvious reasons I refer to those winds as the Viking Winds but to my disappointment nobody seems to have picked up on that insightful phrase. People, eh?”

    That’s rather good and surprising it hasn’t entered in to general usage.

  14. Ripping out the victim’s lungs and making a decoration of them may not be an in-favour sort of diversity.

    How about “Central asian axe-wielding migrant murderer” winds?

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