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Tim Worstall

Being disabled is one thing, being an idiot another

Nobody would think that it is OK to deny someone a job as a result of their sex, race or age, and the same should stand for disabled people, too.

We do deny people jobs because of their age: 14 year olds do not get hired as delivery drivers. We do deny people jobs on the basis of their sex: there are no male wet nurses. As to race: there aren\’t that many black models being used to advertise tanning salons.

Disabled means differently abled. We don\’t hire the blind to be delivery drivers, the deaf as piano tuners nor the dyslexic as subeditors.

Yes we do, and should, deny people a job on the basis of disability. You know, the inability to do the job in question?

Yes Mr. Lean

Yet something pretty dramatic is needed to preserve what is left of the wonders that once thronged our broad acres.

Indeed. We could preserve the Great British Countryside by stopping putting windmills all over it for example.

How long\’s the working week?

Alexander says those earning less than £15,000 will be protected from paying more. This is less than the equivalent of £7.60 an hour and covers just 4% of civil servants.

At a 37.5 hour working week, which I\’ve been told is standard, that\’s £7.69 an hour.

And it was a good little lefty who told me that 37.5 hours is tandard too. I was told I had to use that when calculating minimum wage earnings for example.

But there\’s another point here as well. Only 4% of civil servants are on less than £15,000?

Cut all of their pay, quickly!

Please don\’t let Guardian writers use metals metaphors

You\’ll have heard much about \”gold-plated\” public sector pensions this week, but can you guess the discrete group of public sector employees whose pensions are not so much gold-plated, or even platinum-plated, as rhodium-plated – metaphorically clad in Earth\’s most precious metal?

Aaargh!

Rhodium is a precious metal, yes. But \”precious metal\” has a meaning beyond expensive, it means, roughly, gold, silver and the platinum group metals (platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium and for some extends to ruthenium etc as well).

But in the sense that Our Marina is using it there, precious as expensive, rhodium at $1,600 a troy ounce isn\’t even the most precious of precious metals: platinum is at $1,750.

And they\’re not even the most expensive metals either. There are people who happily pay $3,000 an ounce for scandium for example (alright, not very many (umm, maybe three globally) and that\’s a manufactured product, not just the bulk metal, but still…..)

Grr.

Tee Hee

Talking to Pat Gilbert in Mojo a couple of months back – an early warning shot in a publicity blitzkrieg of mounting and ultimately horrific intensity – the star of Jeeves & Wooster and House imagined Britain\’s critical elite dipping their quills in venom in anticipation of his forthcoming celebration of the unique capacity of the sufferings of black Americans to alleviate the midlife crisis of the white British millionaire. Sorry, I mean his album of New Orleans blues standards.

Anyone actually wanting some interesting blues rather than this milksop version would be better off with early ZZ Top.

Yes, of course, there\’s huge amounts of better blues out there but even early ZZ Top is better. And as for New Orleans, try Dr. John.

Yes, it\’s still all our fault

Much of the literature on sex selection has suggested that cultural patterns explain the phenomenon. But Hvisten dahl lays the blame squarely on western governments and businesses that have exported technology and pro-abortion practices without considering the consequences. Amniocentesis and ultrasound scans have had largely positive applications in the west, where they have been used to detect foetal abnormalities. But exported to Asia and eastern Europe they have been intricately linked to an explosion of sex selection and a mushrooming of female abortions.

Hvistendahl claims western governments actively promoted abortion and sex selection in the developing world, encouraging the liberalisation of abortion laws and subsidising sales of ultrasounds as a form of population control.

And if we hadn\’t exported the technology we\’d still be to blame.

Vide The Guardian and all points lefty vitriol at Georgie Bush, who insisted that no family planning aid could go to those who even advised, let alone performed, abortions.

I do wish that people would keep the story straight. Are we vicious meanies because we\’ve offered foreign women the same freedoms that those at home have or are we vicious meanies because we didn\’t deny them such freedoms?

Philip Davies is right of course

But so profoundly unfashionable that no one will say so:

Philip Davies, the MP for Shipley, claimed the disabled or those with mental health problems were at a disadvantage because they could not offer to work for less money.

Relaxing the law would help some to compete more effectively for jobs in “the real world” in which they are “by definition” less productive than those without disabilities, he claimed.

The remarks stunned MPs on all sides and forced Downing Street to distance the Prime Minister from Mr Davies. Charities and equality campaigners condemned the suggestion as “outrageous”. During a Parliamentary debate, Mr Davies told MPs that the minimum wage of £5.93 per hour meant disabled people who wanted to work found the door being “closed in their face”.

The minimum wage does indeed mean that those who do not offer £5.91 of output per hour do not get jobs.

Take a not entirely hypothetical example. A Down\’s Syndrome lad employed by a supermarket to carry customers\’ groceries out to the car, round up trolleys and so on.

We could certainly argue that this is good for him. Out and about, yes, we do all know that Down\’s is associated with a cheery and gregarious nature. Work, his own income, fun being had by all.

Is it worth £6 an hour to the supermarket? Dunno. But that isn\’t actually the point.

If it\’s only worth £3 an hour to the supermarket then the job is only going to exist, our lad is only going to be out and about and chatting to people, if the supermarket can pay him no more than that £3 an hour.

But wait! No one can live on £3 an hour!It\’s immoral to be paying that little!

Sure, no one can live on £3 an hour. And it may or may not be immoral to pay that little. But markets, as we all know, are amoral. They really don\’t give a shit about morality: either that job pays £3 an hour or that job doesn\’t exist.

So, what should actually happen? Me, callous bastard that I am, say that the supermarket should be able to pay the £3 an hour, employ the boy as both he and they would be happy to do. The not enough to live on bit, well, that\’s us as a society saying that it\’s immoral, so it\’s us as that society who have to top up those wages. We have to put our hands in our pockets directly and give money to the lad.

Both for the moral reason that we should be willing to pay for our sense of morality and also so that the costs of our sense of morality are made plain and clear. Hell, if we really do think this is moral then we\’ll actually enjoy paying the extra: self-righteousness is a most enjoyable emotion.

And yes, this is true of all and any, disabled or not, whose production is not worth £6 an hour. Insisting that they be paid that means they don\’t get jobs at all. Allowing them to sell their labour for what it is worth then topping up their incomes directly from our pockets is the only moral method of dealing with low value labour.

The MP was warned that he would be questioned over the remarks by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

And they can fuck right off. Since when has the freedom of speech of a Member of Parliament in Parliament been subject to the questioning of bureaucratic race mongers?

Hang them, yesterday.

So it\’s not harassment by Twitter then

Best line of the case:

Michael Wolkind QC, argued that his client had a right to expose Mr Haynes’s behaviour. “His websites are his scream of frustration and even his scream of pain,” he told the court.’’ Mr Wolkind added: “He wouldn’t take it lying down – unlike, sadly, his wife did for years in her relationship with Tim Haynes.”

How to milk an almond

Fun looking book from David Friedman.

Explanation here and download here.

Some of the Moorish/Iberian techniques and combinations, if not the actual recipes, look familiar from the modern day Algarve.

For those seriously into cooking could be fun to try out a dish or two.

The Murph

It seems as relevant today: Greece is falling over and needs bailing out. It won’t be alone.

The point is a simple one: this is about money required until confidence is restored, and it is confidence that is key. Because the reality is that confidence is all there is to money because it literally comes out of thin air:

Sigh.

Greece isn\’t illiquid, it isn\’t a matter of confidence. Greece is insolvent.

Please, come along now, accountants are supposed to understand this difference.

Allyson Pollock on NHS reforms

My word, I\’m not sure whether she\’s going to feint in horror or explode in outrage.

Competition and insurance breaks up the systems of redistribution. Several decades of research show that the impact of choice and competition on quality, efficiency and outcomes in healthcare is unproven. The forum pays no heed to evidence, selectively citing a slim array of mainly non-scholarly evidence in support of its ideological framing of market competition.

So, their nefarious aim is uncovered! To move the NHS to a system of government insurance, topped up with private such, with willing and competitive suppliers (some government owned, some mutual, shareholder, some for profit, some charitable) vying to provide health care.

The bastards!

This will make the English health care system exactly like the French health care system in structure.

You know, the health care system that is routinely described as the best in the world?

You just can\’t trust the Tories, can you? Making things better instead of eating babies, damn them!

I demand that we have strikes and marches to prevent this improvement!

Wrong question Dobbo

Alan Milburn is wrong – private hospitals have done little for the NHS

We don\’t actually care whether private hospitals are good for the NHS. For the NHS is just a structure, one that exists to perform a task. It\’s the task, how well it is performed, that is the question we should be talking about.

What is the impact of private hospitals on health care?

This is still open to the answer being a lot, a little, positive, negative, but unless we ask the right questions we\’ll never get the right answers.

The NHS doesn\’t matter: what does is how good is the health care we\’re getting for what price?

Outrage! Outrage! Offshore tax avoidance!

Ms Botín\’s father, Emilio Botín, the chairman of Spanish banking group Santander, was yesterday named along with his brother as part of an investigation into allegations of tax evasion…….

How, but, Spain\’s a democracy! Taxes are determined by the peoples\’ representatives!

Hang them!

Mr Botín and his brother Jamie, along with all their 10 children, including Ms Botín, are being investigated over an account set up by Mr Botín\’s late father, also called Emilio, with HSBC Switzerland.

The Botín family have already paid €200m (£176m) to settle the outstanding tax on the trust, which was set up by Emilio Botín senior in December 1936, after he left Spain to move to London because of the Spanish civil war.

Hmm, what\’s that? You mean there are times and places when offshore, secrecy, are justifiable?

Like, when, say the choice is between the Stalin backed revolutionary goons of the People\’s Republic and the Fascists of Franco\’s Army?

What they\’ve not declared in the interim is one thing, but would the likes of Ritchie of Mr. Shaxson like to claim that it was immoral, tax abuse, to try and protect the family fortune in this manner in hte first place?

In which case, if it is OK to hide the cash when your country is over run by murderous thugs, haven\’t we just said that offshore can and should be allowed to exist? Secretly?

Bank goes bust, depositors lose money. Good

A small number of savers who had more than £85,000 on deposit with Southsea Mortgages could lose the money after the lender was yesterday forced into insolvency by the authorities.

That\’s the way to do it, get rid of that pesky moral hazard.

Now, let\’s see which lefties insist that the depositors must be made whole shall we?

Ooooh, no m\’dears

The company, which is owned by Guardian Media Group and backed by charitable foundation The Scott Trust, plans to make £25m of savings over the next five years and to prioritise digital over print.

Not any more it ain\’t.

Owned by the Scott Trust Limited, not a charitable foundation at all.

The Guardian will continue to publish in the morning, but will focus on analysis and opinion instead of reporting widely available news.

Entirely sensible. Of course it\’s only been going on for decades, that news is something we get from the radio, TV or web, newspapers really being to tell us what it all means. But better late than never…..