Tim Worstall

The old military

Among his favourite postings was a two-year exchange with the Royal New Zealand Air Force (1954-56), although the rules stipulated that Joy was not able to join him until he had turned 25.

Ah, no, that’s not quite true.

They were both 17 and would often meet on the staircase, but it was not until they were 21 that she agreed to marry him.

The rule was that an officer was assumed not to marry before that age of 25. Which meant no married quarters before that age. Also, no rental allowances, no transport for anyone other than the individual officer. And actual military incomes were v low. It was marriage allowances etc that made life possible, those allowances that weren’t available for the under 25s.

My parents got caught up in this. Married at 23 then Pops was posted to Malta. Mum – along with another similarly placed naval wife – went by commercial boat. Rented in the private market. And had no aid or help from the Navy at all. Pops then posted off to the Pacific – Christmas Island for that test – and she had to make her own way back to England with babe in arms and 8 months pregnant.

She sat in the married quarters allocation office in Portsmouth until eventually, out of embarrassment, they gave her some keys. Next morning they came around and evicted her.

She still spits with rage about it today, 60 years later.

Joy could have joined him. It’s just that there would have been absolutely no help nor aid of any kind. And NZ wasn’t a cheap place to get to back then….

What joy

So, there was this bloke who worked in Bath as a software engineer, engineer type in a local company which happened to be one of the world leading ones to do with undersea and North Sea engineering. Oil platforms and the like. Not quite sure why the location, could be the Admiralty engineering peeps strewn around the town, could have been an offshoot of Stothert and Pitt, could be just happenstance.

Like all sensible people he occasionally drank in the best pub in town.

Then California calls and off he goes to work for one of the big ‘uns. Taking with him only his veneration for a US naval officer

At which point:

Google to build ‘Grace Hopper’ subsea cable linking US to UK and Spain

Coincidence? I think not….

This is long what I’ve thought

Harry and Meghan urgently need a lesson in the art of good PR

Yep

For a seasoned Hollywood actress, the Duchess of Sussex is not much good at PR. If the revelations in Finding Freedom, the new book about Harry and Meghan, are to be believed – and there’s every indication the Sussexes helped the authors – she has been her own PR woman before. The book alleges that, before her marriage, she set up “a paparazzi photo here and there” to boost her career….

Not that I devour such slebgossip you understand. But some of it manages to leak through into the rarefied levels of my usual reading.

And I’m convinced that she’s trying to run the PR herself. Sure, she’s got someone actually sending the emails, answering the phone. But she’s running strategy and tactics. And she’s not realised yet that the UK really is a different country, with it’s own version of civilisation and social mores and norms. Which is why the bleatings all sounds as if composed by someone with a tin ear.

What works – or might work, to be fair – for a B lister in the US just doesn’t for a potential A lister in the UK. Which is why it all isn’t working.

They need to hire someone who knows what they’re doing. Or, of course, shut up.

Teachers beg to differ

At least, teachers’ unions are aiming to differ:

Almost 9 in 10 parents say their children will go back to school in the new term, ONS reveals

There was a comment here that now is the time to fire all the teachers, derecognise the unions and then rehire those actually desired and those only.

There’s merit in that.

Tips for Surviving and Thriving in Your MBA Program

If you’ve been out in the working world for a while—and you should be if you are going after an MBA—returning to the classroom can be an adjustment. This is a critical juncture in your career, and it’s important that you hit the ground running and get as much out of the program as you can.

How Will You Pay?

There are a few routes for funding an MBA. Your employer might contribute toward the costs, or you may have savings. Ideally, you’ll be able to focus entirely on school without having to work, but this is not always possible. Still, arranging your finances so that you can think about school instead of worrying about money is important. You can take out a mix of federal and private student loans. For private loans, in addition to traditional sources, such as banks and credit unions, you can often find online lenders who offer low interest rates and repayment plans.

Take Advantage of Your Time

Being in an MBA program puts you in a unique situation to access a number of different opportunities. On-campus recruitment means that major companies will be around to give you a sense of what working with them would be like, but you shouldn’t stop there. Extracurricular activities and clubs can give you more information and experience. Explaining to people that you are an MBA student can often lead to access you might not otherwise have to informational interviews, conferences and data. In addition to the networking opportunities offered by your peers and professors, try meeting people at seminars and even cold contacting via LinkedIn or other methods. This is a time to be bold.

Focus

You need to strike a balance between learning as much as you can and not losing sight of your ultimate goals. One way you might approach this is allowing yourself to take a broader view in your first year that you narrow in your second to hone in on what you see yourself doing after you complete your degree. Having a long-term goal in mind can also be important because an MBA program can start to feel like too much of a good thing, with an overwhelming number of opportunities that can make you feel stressed out instead of excited if you aren’t sure where you want to be in five or ten years.

Self-Care

With all these opportunities and your driving ambition, it can be easy to make your graduate program the center of your life, but ironically, this might actually be the quickest path to burnout. Prioritize your studies without making them the be-all and end-all of your existence. Balance them with something that you can enjoy and that re-energizes you. For many people, this might be some type of physical activity, such as running or yoga, or it might be cooking or refinishing old furniture. In general, you should make an effort to continue pursuing your outside interests and maintaining the relationships you had prior to entering your MBA programs. Your family and friends who have cheered you on up to this point can be valuable sources of support and perspective during this exciting, challenging period.

Damning with faint praise

From the PR for another one of these lefty books that tells us we need more state because coronavirus.

“The best thing I’ve read about how we got into this mess, and how we get out.”
Frankie Boyle

You’re using Frankie to do the blurb on a book of economics? Jeez, what did people who actually understand the subject say about it?

This is fun logic

Fourth, this indicates the conservative nature of most wealth ownership. There is, of course, no productive value to gold, but the owners of this wealth do not care about that. What is of concern to them is the preservation of their status, indicated by wealth, and that is what motivates this decision.

Fifth, this does very clearly indicate a capacity to tax wealth more: if the wealthy cannot put their wealth to productive use then they might as well pay tax with it.

That people try to preserve their wealth shows that it should be taxed away from them.

That you resist the mugger shows your wallet should be taken.

What they say he said

Tom Cotton calls slavery ‘necessary evil’ in attack on New York Times’ 1619 Project

Err, no, not quite. What he actually said:

He added: “We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we can’t understand our country. As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as [Abraham] Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.”

Now my knowledge of the details of US history is light but even I can see that that’s a very different statement.

As to what was actually the necessary evil I have an inkling that the Founding Fathers didn’t say that slavery was, but some sort of deal that dealt with the existence of slavery was – the union could only get going if there was some recognition of its existence, some set of rules that allowed a slave based society to be a part of it etc.

Perhaps someone who knows more on this would care to elaborate for the rest of us?

Yes, OK, fair enough

Wealthy men are nearly twice as likely to develop high blood pressure than men who have a lower income, a study has revealed.

Higher household income was more likely to make men drink alcohol every day and be obese in contrast to wealthy women who were more likely to engage in healthier behaviour.

More than one in four adults in the UK have high blood pressure, with an estimated one billion people living with it worldwide. High blood pressure is the leading global cause of premature death.

Except we do have a problem here. Wealthier people live longer than poorer people – in the UK at least.

Meaning that either these observations don’t apply to the UK or that high blood pressure isn’t all that much of a problem.

Trump’s vote just rose

Armed black militia in America issues threat to build ‘its own nation’
‘Not F****** Around Coalition’ outnumber far-right militia group Three Percenters in Louisville, Kentucky

Fears of violent clashes in the wake of the protests sweeping the US heightened over the weekend with a show of force by an armed black militia group….

The right to bear arms applies whatever the skin colour. But the social – or even societal – response might not be quite so level headed.

Snippa’s real problem

And government recklessness is not helping, as the case of permitting unnecessary overseas holidays proves.

He thinks that people should only be allowed to do what is necessary. Rather than as they wish, if that’s possible.

You know the difference between freedom, liberty and totalitarianism.

Oh Lord

In 2018 he graduated in politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London

Maro Itoje is not going to have a healthy and balanced view then…..

The wrong sort of protestors

The president of the Portland branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), ED Mondainé, warned that the Black Lives Matter movement in the city is being coopted by “privileged white people” with other agendas. He said the confrontations with the federal officers sent by the president are little more than a “spectacle and a distraction that do nothing for the cause of black equality”.

Mondainé accused groups of young white people at the forefront of confronting federal officers of rising to Trump’s bait and using the campaign against racial injustice to provoke a fight in pursuit of other causes, such as anti-capitalism.

“The children of the privileged are dancing on the stages of those that gave their lives for this movement,” he told the Guardian.

Given that Portland is about 3% black – about the same as the UK as a whole – that the protestors are largely not-black shouldn’t come as all that much of a surprise.

So that screws tourism then

The UK imposed restrictions on holidaymakers returning from Spain on Saturday night in a bid to curb the surge in coronavirus infections.

No, not just to Spain. It creates uncertainty about everywhere. No one can plan now, can they?

And what’s the great enemy of an economy? Uncertainty.

It’s also going to be interesting as hell to see whether the system can cope with tens of thousands who might, just might, be of a mind to not wholly cooperate.

Quite fascinating

Almost 10 years ago to the month, I was a newly qualified junior doctor, working in Oxford’s major teaching hospital, the John Radcliffe. On one of my first on-call shifts, a characteristically busy Saturday evening, I was summoned to the ward by a kindly Filipino nurse. She was distressed about a patient, an elderly man delirious with infection, who was shouting racial slurs at the nursing staff.

“How are you feeling today, sir?” I asked with a cheerful, if insincere, lilt.

“I’m not arrogant, I’m English, which is more than I can say for you, you black bastard!” he replied with equal buoyancy.

I considered a cheeky retort but opted instead for a wry smile and a gentle dose of lorazepam to settle the matter quickly. I scurried away, more patients to see and blood tests to review before handover to the night team.

That’s interesting:

Lorazepam
Medication
Description
Lorazepam, sold under the brand name Ativan among others, is a benzodiazepine medication. It is used to treat anxiety disorders, trouble sleeping, active seizures including status epilepticus, alcohol withdrawal, and chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting.

A cheerful shout of you black bastard gets you drugged into submission?

Or, to put a better face on the action, a shout of you black bastard is evidence of being so unaware of yourself and surroundings through illness that treatment is required?

Amazing

Working mothers in particular are bearing the brunt. Centuries of structural social convention have ensured the tasks of childcare and homeschooling are more likely to fall on their shoulders,

The genetics of a sexually dimorphic, mammalian, species having nothing to do with it then?

Welcome to the marketplace luv

‘I cannot be silent’: exposing the racial pay gap among influencers
The disparity between the fees paid to black influencers and their white counterparts has come under scrutiny after a group of campaigners spoke out

Different people are worth different amounts of money. I get paid less than Victoria Coren. I’d get paid less than her even if we wrote at the same length for the same newspaper on the same day.

That’s just how it works. Possibly more alarmingly I get paid than Julie Bindel (at least I think I do) or Afua Hirsch and that’s also just how it works. I get paid what editors value me at just like everyone else in the same game.