Skip to content

Tim Worstall

Bit of a surprise, horseburgers

In Tesco Everyday Value Beef Burgers, horse meat accounted for approximately 29 per cent of the meat. The supermarket announced last night that it was removing all fresh and frozen burgers from sale immediately regardless if they had been found to contain horse meat.

Tim Smith, the group technical director of Tesco, said: “The presence of illegal meat in our products is extremely serious. Our customers have the right to expect that food they buy is produced to the highest standards.”

An investigation was carried out by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland. The Food Standards Agency, working with the Irish authorities, established that mainland Britain was part of the area affected.

More than a third (37 per cent) of the products tested in Ireland contained horse DNA, while the vast majority (85 per cent) also contained pig DNA.

Some of this is trace amounts in some products. Others, as above, are substantial amounts. But here\’s the surprise (from some unknown corner of the memory bank). Horse meat oxidises as soon as it is ground. Turns a grey/brown colour almost immediately. So whatever your views on chowing down on Trigger it\’s just not something you\’d expect someone to put into mince.

I absolutely do not understand these fucking computers

OK, so, to avoid me going blind on this tiny screen on this netbook while I\’m up here for a few months I\’ve bought a 20 something inch monitor for what, 150 quid. 100 maybe.

So, I\’ve got it connected to the netbook. I\’ve got two screens running. They\’re showing exactly the same stuff.

I thought you could have two screens on Windows now?

But that\’s the least of it.

The screen resolution on this notebook screen seems to have declined for fucks sake. Which isn\’t the point at all.

And the new screen. Every 30 seconds it insists on running a banner (first time at the top of the screen, second at the bottom, third at the top etc) Telling me that is\’ got Full HD, DVB, HDMI etc. How in buggery do I get rig of that?

All I want to be able to do is run two computer screens off this little netebook. Samsung something or other.

And I thought these thigs were supposed to be cunting plug and play now?

Ritchie on HMV

Business cannot compete on an unlevel playing field. Tax can and does unlevel playing fields.

So, corporation tax kills companies.

Remind me then: why are we killing companies by levying corporation tax on them?

What excellent news!

Supermarkets seeking to establish more “standalone” forecourt sites could result in the opening of a further 25 to 40 new filling stations operated by the retail giants each year, the PRA said.

It claimed that “every new supermarket site is sucking the equivalent volume of five independents out of the market”.

How super, eh?

Consumers still get their petrol to consume but the system uses one fifth of the assets and resources to provide it. More ouput for less input: we\’re getting richer in every way.

Hurrah!

In which we consider Chuka Umunna

Music and film suppliers, who want to see HMV survive as internet retailers erode their margins, have been crucial to keeping HMV afloat.

Mmm, yes, I can understand that. Old way of doing business would indeed prefer not to have their rent claiming ability wiped out by new technology.

Chuka Umunna, Labour’s Shadow Business Secretary, called HMV a “national institution” and described last night’s news as “deeply worrying”.

Yeah, it is deeply worrying that consumers will no longer see producers\’ margins being protected.

At some point someone\’s going to have to break it to our Little Chuka. The point of this whole economy game is the consumer, not the producer.

Remember, it will be an Azerbaijani judge that decides this

Legal advice reportedly sent to David Cameron warns that church could be sued under human rights legislation if they refuse to allow the services to proceed.

Exemption granted to the Church of England by the Coalition Bill to prevent it having to conduct gay marriages is “eminently challenge-able” in the European Court of Human Rights.

It also warns that the Government\’s insistence that protections put in place for other religious groups who don\’t want to marry homosexuals could be undermined by evolving European human rights law.

Yup, really.

If Iain Dale* wants to get married in a church then I\’m all in favour of whatever church wishing to marry Iain Dale being allowed to do so.

I\’m a little less sanguine about the law forcing a church which does not wish to marry Iain Dale off to his civil partner to do so.

And I\’m really most unhappy with the idea that the marriage law of England and Wales will be determined by an Azerbaijani, Armenian, Ukrainian, Serb, Russian and so on that make up the judges of the European Court of Human Rights.

Yes, no doubt this is crude xenophobia on my part. I would prefer to call it keeping a close eye on those who define our civil liberty myself.

* Used as an exemplar for no other reason than he\’s the only person I know of in a civil partnership that I can imagine wanting to get married. Clearly an insight into the narrowness of my social circle.

The NHS kills 125,000 people a year. Let\’s change the name of this killing says Minister

The pluperfect of politics:

The Liverpool Care Pathway – the controversial set of clinical guidelines for those close to death – should undergo a name change, a minister has suggested.

People are just beginning to understand that the Liverpool Care Pathway is the method by which the NHS kills 125,000 people a year. In order to aid such understanding we must of course change the name of the Liverpool Care Pathway.

It is just the most perfect example of what politics is all about isn\’t it?

Anyway, my suggestion for the new name for the LCP: \”This is how the NHS killed granny and this it how it will kill you. Oh, and thanks for the lifetime of paying for all of this.\”

We could of course give it it\’s real and simple name. Euthanasia. But that seems to make some people uncomfortable for some strange reason. Can\’t imagine why: after all, it is good for the State that the old pop their clogs uncomplainingly and early, isn\’t it? And what\’s good for the State is the only worthwhile moral guide in existence.

Oh, we\’ll fight for the French all right: but will they fight for us?

Mali is part of Francophone Africa. Les Frogs regard that remnant of their Empire as their plaything.

Ministers have confirmed that Britain is \”committed to supporting\” a European Union training mission that would put up to 500 European troops into Mali within weeks.

So this EU thing means that British lives and money must be put on the line to defend France\’s sphere of influence in its ex-Empire.

And when the Argentine hordes descend again upon Port Stanley we\’ll be able to call upon Les Grognards, won\’t we?

Will we fucking buggery.

I\’m afraid that the only solution is to nuke Paris. Fortunately this is a solution that would have the full, even ecstatic, support of every non-Parisian Frenchman.

Pickle\’s Perfection

So while we\’re all talking about whether we should try to leave the EU, reform it, reform the relationship with it, lead from the centre or become the revolutionary vanguard of it, here\’s Eric Pickles showing what the fucking problem is:

Britons should be free to wear religious symbols because “faith galvanises our communities”, Eric Pickles will say before a European Court ruling on wearing crosses.


How interesting.

The Communities Secretary will say that liberty has been undermined by the “intolerance of aggressive secularism”.

Later, the European Court of Human Rights will rule on whether people should be allowed to wear crosses to work.

So, duly elected MP, duly appointed Minister, in the democratic government of a nominally Christian country, thinks that those who have a specific religious faith should be allowed to wear symbols of that faith while out and about and earning a living.

And will said MP and Minister actually have a say on whether Christian religious symbols might be allowable in a nominally Christian country?

No, actually he won\’t. He has the square root of toss all power to decide or influence the decision one way or another.

That belongs, no, not to the EU, but to the ECHR, which is an offshoot of the Council of Europe. And guess who actually gets to decide this?

Well, actually, it\’s judges from such notable exemplars of civil liberty, human rights and democratic governance as Monaco, Liechtenstein, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Macedonia, Serbia, Albania, San Marino, Ukraine, Moldova and Russia.

No, really, this is how it works these days. Whether or not a Christian can wear a cross to work in the United Kingdom is decided by one of Putin\’s Placemen.

All Hail human rights, eh?

I\’ll admit that I don\’t particularly have a dog in this particular fight: the only use I\’ve ever had for those little crosses is in identifying the ex-convent girls who would. Very useful they were too.

But the method, the process, by which such a decision is reached does seem to be rather, umm, wrong. Or to be technical about the law, fucking insane.

I would certainly support leaving the Council of Europe. Which, given that you\’ve got to be in it to be in the EU means leaving the EU. In fact, I\’d actually argue that we should just leave the Council of Europe. At which point the EU has to throw us out. And leaving the CoE is, as with the other CofE, really rather easy.

And seriously, how did we end up with an Azerbaijani ruling on civil liberties in England? Isn\’t it about time we told the whole lot of them to go boil their heads?

Isn\’t this just so glorious?

Over the kerfluffle in the Socialist Workers\’ Party:

The CC now unfortunately represents a conservative layer now firmly ingrained in the party and focused on preserving its position. Many of it’s members have worked for the party for a decade or more, they rely on the party as an income and have become career bureaucrats entrenched in their jobs. Somewhere along the way the leadership stopped being a group of leading revolutionaries and started to be a self-serving political class in their own right.

Err, yes?

WTF do you think all the free marketeers and anti-bureaucracy peeps have been saying for generations then?

Not that young Emma will manage to make the connection of course. Nor Seymour himself. Exactly what is happening in the SWP is exactly the argument against that self-appointed vanguard telling the rest of us how to live our lives.

The only possible defense of their stupidity is Kip Esquire\’s Law. That they\’ll be the ones doing the telling. But let\’s be honest here: if you can\’t get on the Central Committee of a party that has barely more members than seats on the CC, then no one\’s going to hire you to run an entire country now, are they?

This is fucking rich from Ed Balls

And it is undermining the ability of HMRC to administer and collect the tax, by cutting its resources too far and too fast.

The reduction in HMRC headcount is a direct consequence of, indeed part of the plan of, the merger of Inland Revenue with Customs&Excise.

Something planned by George Brown when Chancellor. And the SpAd to George Brown when Chancellor was….Ed Balls.

You actually planned this you tosser!

Today\’s example of Ritchielogic

When the 50% income tax rate was introduced in April 2010 we know that its introduction was accompanied by massive tax abuse, with income being shifted from the 2010-11 tax year into 2009-10. HMRC estimate around £18 billion was moved between years to save tax.

OK.

As is reported this morning, as the end of the 50% tax era approaches companies are thinking hard about delaying income payments to achieve the same tax saving result for their employees.

If you say so.

And in the process all the absurd calculations on Laffer effects offered by HM Treasury in 2012 need to be revisited: it is very obvious that these embraced an implicit assumption that the behaviour would not be noted. When that assumption is changed then so does so the so called Laffer effect.

I\’m sorry. What?

The proof that people change their behaviour dependent upon tax rates is to be used to deny the Laffer Curve, that people change their behaviour dependent upon tax rates?

Eh?

On the terror that is sugar in our food

I\’m sure you\’ll all have noticed the increasing propaganda about how it\’s sugar that is the evil in our food. about how it should be banned, forsworn, government must do something?

So here\’s a little test. The European Union has a Sugar Policy. Which is that vast sums of taxpayers\’ money must be lavished upon farmers who grow sugar beet. You know, so they can grow more of this sugar that is killing us all?

Have you seen any single one of those complaining about sugar arguing that the first and most obvious point, if sugar really is evil, must be to kill stone dead, bury with a stake in its heart at the crossroads, lemon between the teeth and decaptitated, the EU\’s Sugar Policy?

No, I haven\’t either. I assume this is because these people whining about sugar are simply cunts.

About this Suzanne Moore, Julie Birchill, trans and aren\’t they hateful to gender benders thing

Yes, yes, I know. Civil liberties are indivisible: if I am to claim freedom and liberty then I most certainly have to defend it for all others. For if I am willing to connive at the denail of liberty to others then there will most assuredly be those who will connive at the curtailment of my own.

However, this Wtrans community\” that\’s being talked about.

The trans community has more things to worry about than the possibility that, if Julie Burchill gets really angry, she might find even nastier things to say about us. Her Observer piece filled the bingo card of transphobic insults, short of accusing us of baby-eating and black magic. Nonetheless, when a minority is accused of intolerant bullying, it is always important that the slur not be allowed to stand, especially when the accusation becomes a pretext for hate speech.

As you\’ll all know I\’m afraid that I don\’t recognise the existence of \”hate speech\”. Incitement to immediate violence is a crime and rightly so. Other than that and libel free speech is exactly that: there\’s no right not to be offended by someone exercising that liberty either.

It may very well be bad manners to criticise or critique the lifestyle choices of others but it shouldn\’t be illegal. And yes, this does indeed mean that, legally, people must be free to make free with such vile words as nigger, kike, rugmuncher, poof and Mark Oaten.

However, the thing that really interested me about this \”trans community\” is, well, how large is this community? It\’s a bit like this question of how large is the homosexual community? Campaigners seem to think it\’s about 10% of the population. Actual real surveys seem to think some 2%, maybe 3% of men, 1 to 2% of women (and here we get into all sorts of linguistic confusions: homosexual should mean \”same sex attraction\” and thus include both men shagging men and women shagging women. But it is sometimes used to men only the male side, with women being descibed as lesbians. Shrug).

Part of this is a difference of definitions: the higher numbers come from, when they\’re not just being thrown around by campaigners, all those who have had some same sex sex experience. The lower numbers from those who are either exclusively or preferentially so.

But trans? How large is this community?

Since 2000 a total of 853 men have gone under the knife to become women while in the same time span 12 women have had an operation to become a man.

Back in 2000 there were just 54 sex change operations carried out in the country while last year the figure stood at 143.

Hmm.

Lightning is dangerous. Currently, about 30-60 people are struck by lightning each year in Britain

Yes, yes, I know civil liberties are indivisible. But that does give something of a sense of proportion, doesn\’t it?

The \”trans community\” is around and about the same size as the \”survived being stuck by lighting community\”.

With just one slight difference. Given the number of trans support groups out there, the counsellors, heck, the number of writers on the subject for The Guardian, I can\’t help but feel that the number of people dependent upon the community is larger than the community itself. Or, perhaps, that every member of it is employed by it.

This is just laughable from Misha Glenny

An entirely stupid piece. Yes, you\’ve guessed where.

However, it\’s actually extremely encouraging. Read the comments. There are 35 or so as I write. Absolutely all of them are asking \”what the fuck are you talking about?\”.

Glenny\’s point, such as it is, is that if we leave the EU then we\’ll all be trampled by cybercrime. Only Brussels can protect us. It\’s not so much that this isn\’t a serious contention (which of course it is not) but that even the readers of The Guardian can see how ludicrous it is.

My own addition was this:

This is truly fascinating:

\”In October that year the FBI, working with Britain\’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) and other European police forces, succeeded in closing down the DarkMarket website. \”

The police forces and intelligence agencies of sovereign nations successfully cooperate to close down a multi-national criminal enterprise.

This proves that we cannot rely upon the police forces and intelligence agencies of sovereign nations to successfully cooperate to close down multi-national criminal enterprises.

Next week Mr. Glenny uses the same logic to show that because water is wet we must all have a bath to get dry.

Dodgy, dodgy, statistics

Of course, we\’d like to know whether official aid helps. And whether it crowds out private sector investment. So we get these numbers from The Guardian:

On average, in these countries aid flows increased threefold between 2000 and 2010, but there was no sign that official assistance crowded out private investment. Far from it, foreign direct investment increased fourfold over the same period. Growth averaged 5.5% between 2000 and 2011, an impressive performance given the meltdown in the global economy that followed the financial crisis of 2007.

Glory Be! Private sector aid follows public! Quick, right that cheque on the taxpayers\’ account!

Err, hang on a bit.

Africa is in the midst of an economic boom. Foreign Direct Investment [FDI] in Sub-Saharan Africa grew from US$9bn in 2000 to over $62bn in 2008, with Ernest & Young capital investment forecast of $150bn by 2015.

You mean that those countries that got that lovely aid got less private investment than those that did not?

This is evidence that there is no crowding out how exactly?

BTW, the general growth rate in sub-Saharan Africa over this period was 5.4%.

We\’ve not got any great evidence in favour of official foreign aid here, have we?