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Tim Worstall

Sadly not

Although he is as surprised as anyone to find himself an industry figurehead, a position he says is a “privilege”, Kerridge is a natural spokesman. At 52, he has an unassailable position in English cooking, with a gift for taking things Britons actually like to eat (steaks, fish and chips, pies) and honing them to compete with haute cuisine. Above all, he has a gift for pubs. The Hand & Flowers, Kerridge’s pub-with-ideas in Marlow, is the only pub to hold two Michelin stars; the Coach, down the road, has one.

No, that’s a gift for restaurants, not pubs.

That the two are thought to be the same thing these days is one of those proofs of the decline of society.

Ah, no, this isn’t quite right

According to figures from the finance ministry this week, the so-called differential contribution, a special rate of income tax for the highest earners, generated an additional €400m last year. That compares to a forecast of €1.9bn.
It is not exactly a minor shortfall. The tax only raised a quarter of what was expected. This year is not likely to prove much better. Revenue is forecast at €650m, €1bn less than was planned. It has proved a spectacular flop.
Of course, it is not hard to work out what went wrong. The better-off simply adjusted their income to bring themselves under the threshold, or else they moved elsewhere.

True, the French extra tax hasn’t worked out. But it’s not, as far as I know, actually a Laffer response. It’s more fun than that:

That is, the initial numbers used to show how much the tax would raise were wrong. Wrong simply because the Treasury didn’t know how many people there were with how much of which type of income would be affected by the new tax. That is, this is failure by Hayek, not failure by Laffer.

Recall the Nobel lecture, The Pretence of Knowledge. The core lesson of which is that the centre, government, never does know enough about something as complex as the economy to be able to plan in detail. It’s not just wishes and all get to be an autocrat for a day, it’s not intentions, it’s simply the lack of that detailed knowledge that makes it all so difficult. There is also no cure for this – the Hayekian contention is that the centre will never, cannot, have the knowledge in the necessary detail.

Failure by Hayek is indeed different from failure by Laffer. Even if the end result is much the same, the plans of ants and autocrats gang aft agley….

Failure, yes, but failure for a slightly different reason.

Have I got this right?

So, this 10,000 steps a day thing (no, I’m not thinking of doing it. Rather, just seen it again and pondering it).

So, average human footstep is 2.5 feet, 30 inches (for men at least). 10,000 steps is thus 25,000 feet, which is 14 miles, isn’t it?

Ah, yes, Timmy and numbers. It’s 1720 (-ish) yards, not feet, to the mile. So, 14/3, = 5 miles a day.

Hmm, OK, reasonable enough as a bit of exercise I guess……

Spud and central bank independence

Spud wants the Bank of England to lose its independence so that government can determine monetary policy. More democratic that way. The Observer on why this isn’t a good idea:

That The Don is in favour of it should give Spud thought, obvs.

Inflation – thus interest rates – would be higher over time without CB independence. Further, for any given monetary stance interest rates would be higher. Because everyone and their Granny will assume that the politicians will run interest rates too low, inflation too high. Just because that’s what everyone will, logically, think the politicians will do.

As ever, it’s not that Spud is wrong, the task is only ever to work out why.

Isn’t this now such an excellent idea

Defence isn’t fundamentally about armaments. It’s about legitimacy.

If people do not believe a society is worth defending, then no quantity of weapons will save it. And neoliberalism, which is designed to reward the few, cannot now demand sacrifice from the many.

That is why I think the only credible defence policy now is a politics of care: a society that values everyone, delivers for everyone, and earns loyalty by legitimacy.

Spending more on the NHS will show PutHitler what’s what, what?

Hmm

The Green Party is being sued by a former member who was suspended for mocking “fairy” pronouns.
Emma Bateman, who was co-chair of Green Party Women, was found to have breached diversity rules by making “clearly antagonistic” comments about “fae/faer” pronouns, a type of “neopronoun” inspired by the mythical world.

So, if you can believe this, the Green Party just got even dimmer the day they threw this lady out.

Astonishing but true.

It’s going to be fun finding out about this

The Crown’s Silence, a book by the historian Brooke Newman, follows the Guardian’s 2023 Cost of the crown report, which explored the British monarchy’s hidden ties to transatlantic slavery.

The book reveals that by 1807, when Britain abolished the slave trade in its empire, the British crown had become the world’s largest buyer of enslaved people, buying 13,000 men for the army for £900,000.

Of course, we’ve the obvious difference between “The Crown” and “The Monarchy” to deal with here which an American doesn’t seem to get.

But there’s also this:

Prior to the abolition of the slave trade within the British Empire in 1807, there was much debate about the legal status of the West India Regiments’ soldiers, and whether they were subject to slave laws or not. But on discharge from the regiments the men were free and in some cases awarded pensions and other support.

In 1807, all serving black soldiers who had been recruited as slaves were freed under the Mutiny Act of that year. The act established that the black soldiers were freemen and should be treated like any other soldiers.

It’s probably more accurate to say they were “bought out of slavery” than that they were bought as slaves. Wonder if our American lassie has made that distinction…..

Still, we know what’s going to happen here. “Crown” “Monarch” slavery, soldiers, so pay reparations REEEEEE!

Yes, you’re right

Research published last year found that the stretching of the polar vortex in this way is contributing to extreme weather in the US and that global heating, counterintuitively, could be playing a role in accelerating this process.

Vast winter snowstorms are evidence of global warming. You’re right, it’s not a science, is it, given that it is not refutable by any form of evidence…..

Oh, right

The killing was captured on a surveillance video which shows Zarutska, wearing the uniform of the pizza shop she worked at, staring at her phone when Brown appears to stab her from behind. The gruesome footage quickly went viral. Conservative circles took up Zarutska’s murder as an example of what they consider to be rampant violence in US cities. Leading Maga figures used nakedly racist, dehumanizing language to describe Brown.

It’s the dehumanising language which is the crime, obviously.

Abject tossers, eh?

He’s going to spunk the cash, isn’t he?

The UK business secretary, Peter Kyle, has said he is “betting big” and “picking winners” as the government takes direct stakes in growing businesses to boost economic growth.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, have been talking up Britain’s prospects, Kyle said ministers were taking an “activist” approach to industrial policy.

Yep, he is.

He highlighted the recent decision to allow the £26bn state-owned British Business Bank to buy equity stakes in companies, including the announcement last week of a £25m investment in the energy supplier Octopus’s software spin-off, Kraken.

“The most potential in our economy, in the short and medium term, is scale-up companies,” Kyle said. “I was at Octopus yesterday. They’re now employing 1,500 people in their head office in London alone.

“We can find other companies that are on that kind of trajectory and we can expedite their growth. Then it will create thousands of new jobs, and it will create enormous amounts of wealth, which will recycle through the economy in a really fast way.”

Spray it all right up the wall.

There’s a vast PE and VC indistry already scouring the economy for those things. What makes anyone think that government – moving slower, with weaker incentives – is going to find hidden gems?

Whoo, boy

Prof Michael Jennions, study co-author, added: “While the human penis functions primarily to transfer sperm,…..

A sexologist who says that has really missed a very large part of being human.

Face to face mating, the existence of tits, the female orgasm, pair bonding, convealed ovulation eetc. All point to hte idea that the penis has a distinct function in pleasuring the female – and the male, obvs – rather than just being a sperm transference tool.

Yes, Polly, yes

Look how tough the bill is: those within six months of dying can ask for help (only in writing) to speed their ending, from two doctors seven days apart. After another wait, a panel of a psychiatrist, social worker and senior lawyer must agree, and the patient must be able to take the drug themselves with a doctor present. Many safeguards were added, and clinicians are free not to participate. Evidence from the many countries with similar laws shows that relatively few people use it, but most approaching death are comforted to know if the agony becomes unbearable, they can choose to end it.

Abortion was supposed to be tought, two doctors and all that. Didn’t quite work out that way, did it? Nor is ity in Canada. 4% of all deaths is not, in fact, “rare”.

So, you know, bugger off.

Mehdi’s stretching here

Which way, western man?

That was the title of a racist tract published in 1978 by William Gayley Simpson, a former leftist Christian pastor turned one of the most influential neo-Nazi ideologues in American history. The book helped radicalize an entire generation of white supremacists in the US, with its vicious antisemitism, opposition to all forms of immigration and open praise for Hitler. The purpose of the book, wrote Simpson, was “to reveal organized Jewry as a world power entrenched in every country of the white man’s world, operating freely across every nation’s frontiers, and engaged in a ruthless war for the destruction of them all”.

In recent decades, Which way, western man? has become a popular meme – but only on the far-right fringes of the internet.

OK, so a phrase becomes a reference in the language. Even, embedded in it. That doesn;t mean that everyone who uses the phrase is even aware of, let alone agrees with, the origin or even original framing of the phrase.

Shocking? Yes. Coincidence? Nope. Earlier this month, the official White House Twitter account posted a cartoon of Greenlandic huskies with Danish flags on their sleds facing a choice between the White House on one side and China’s Great Wall and Russia’s Red Square on the other. The White House’s caption? “Which way, Greenland man?”

It should be one of the biggest stories in the United States, if not the world. Eighty years after the death of Hitler and the defeat of Nazi Germany, the US government, in the form of the Trump administration, has a Nazi problem.

Which is Medi’s conspirazoid of the week. That use of the phrase means you do think Jews are taking over the world.

Sigh.

It would also be a lot more convincing if Mehdi wasn’t on record as calling non-muslims kuffar and all that nor his views on Israel and Gaza. But, you know, consistency across columns is not a lefty influencer requirement these days now, is it?

‘Mazin’ the insight

I was persuaded then, and remain persuaded now, that the costs of economic growth are seen in the climate breakdown that challenges our very existence, not just our economy.

They gave that laddie the Nobel for exploring the externalities of the economy, right?

CND again

In my opinion, this is entirely unacceptable, and not just because it will have been agreed under coercion. I have always found it repugnant that US bases in the UK are considered, for all practical purposes, to be US sovereign territory.

In this context, I entirely agree with Zach Polanski that the time has arrived for us to reconsider the hosting of US bases in the UK, and, through base sharing, in places like Cyprus, from which support has been provided for the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

NATO should, at this moment, be reconsidering the whole reason why it permits forces from a hostile country like the USA to be located in its territory, with a necessary transition for their removal now being a requirement for peace in Europe.

He really does need to grasp that the Greens choose those who gain vermine by a vote of party members, not decisions of party leaders sucked up to.

I also very much love that reference to Cyprus. The US bases in the UK are not sovereign US territory in any manner. The UK bases in Cyprus are, in every manner, sovereign UK territory.

We know the answer here

Britain’s wind farm turbines wasted enough energy to power all of London’s homes last year, new figures show.

A record 10 terawatt hours (TWh) of wind power went to waste in 2025, according to a report from energy analyst Montel – costing billpayers a total of £1.4bn in “curtailment costs”.

This was up 22pc on the year before, as growing strain on the grid prevented wind power from being transported to the cities and towns that need it most.

Well, we know the answer that will be given – we must invest in hte grid to make use of that ‘leccie. And investment is good, right? Creates jobs!

But, jobs are a cost, investment is a cost. So, we’ve just increased the costs of wind power by calling for more jobs, more investment.

Now, it could be true that carrying those extra costs are worth it. The net result could be beneficial and therefore we do it. But to work that out we’ve got to be clear about all of the costs involved and all of the benefits. So, who thinks MiliEd will give us clarity on that?

Well, quite….

Oh. Right

So, something that works well enough must be changed:

Child sponsorship schemes that allow donors to handpick children to support in poor countries can carry racialised, paternalistic undertones and need to be transformed, the newly appointed co-chief executives of ActionAid UK said as they set out to “decolonise” the organisation’s work.

My word, eh? Paternalistic!

the goal of shifting narratives around aid from sympathy towards solidarity and partnership with global movements.

We must move from changing a life, one by one, to changing all of society in the Glorious Revolution! This also means no cash leakage out to actually aiding any individual at all. All casn be spent on the nomenklatura! Many meetings to be had!

ActionAid’s future is about solidarity, justice ……Better education, state welfare systems and healthcare should be the model – all responsibilities of a nation state.

Just think of the grift!

Sigh, oh so typical

So, viaticals. Blokes dying of AIDS sell their life insurance policies, get cash now to live out their last months or years. Then treatments change and they’re not dying and those who bought them are shafted. As with that French system of reverse mortgages, if they live then you’re stuffed. As happened to that lawyer who reverse mortgaged Jeanne Calment who went on to live to 120something. Har Har.

A documentary about it:

DeeDee Chamblee, a trailblazing advocate and activist reminds us that for Black trans women living with Aids – who often didn’t have jobs that provided life insurance policies – a viatical settlement was something they could only dream about.

One of the most harrowing moments of the documentary comes when Chamblee remembers suffering through her illness, with only three T-cells left, and how she would fantasize about getting a payout to live out her final days in peace. “I could go to the beach, and I could stay there until this thing is through,” she reminisces. “That was not a reality at all,” she adds, expecting to end up buried in a wooden box in a “potter’s field” with other unclaimed bodies.

Chamblee’s testimony is a jolting reminder that her experience living with Aids is a world away from the white, gay men who had policies to sell. In making Cashing Out, Nadel realized the most marginalized, particularly trans sex workers of color, aren’t “afforded a shred of basic dignity when their death is imminent”.

Oh. Right. So it’s bad that those with life insurance policies etc etc because some don;t have life insurance policies? Apparently so, yes. Equalideee, see?

BTW, life insurance – unlike medical insurance – isn’t tied to a job in the US. Anyone can rock up, take out a policy, pay the premiums.

Snigger

And the conspiracy of silence about her defects is allowing Harris to quietly rebuild her support. Harris still places second or even first in the polling for who should be the Democrats’ 2028 nominee.

Make JD’s job easier, obviously.

But this far out such surveys are records of who people have heard of, not who they would support. It’s a record of the few who can pass the “Who the fuck is that?” test.

Terrible Twattishness

Just 32 fossil fuel companies were responsible for half the global carbon dioxide emissions driving the climate crisis in 2024, down from 36 a year earlier, a report has revealed.

The idiots are assuming that the people who drill for the oil are responsible for the emissions of people using the oil. When, obvs, it’s the people using the oil responsible. For if no one wanted to use the oil then no one would drill for it. Obviously.

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