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Tim Worstall

There was always a certain suspicion, no?

Gerry Adams was identified by Sir John Major as a member of the IRA’s army council, according to US files seen by The Telegraph.
In a diplomatic cable, the then prime minister is reported to have said that Mr Adams was on the council, which directed the activities of the paramilitary group. Another memo also identifies Mr Adams as a senior IRA commander.

Which did lead to the Greatest Tweet Of All Time.

Adams put up some whinge about how long it takes to go around turning all the Christmas lights off. To get the response “Surely you know someone who can set a timer?”

So who will be running the U Boats this time?

The British government should be stockpiling food, according to a leading expert on food policy, as it is not prepared for climate shocks or wars that could cause the population to starve.

Prof Tim Lang of City St George’s, University of London said the UK produced far less food than it needed to feed itself, and as a small island that relied on a few large companies to feed its giant population, it was particularly vulnerable to shocks.

Was on a radio show with Lang once. His ability to be wrong in service of gaining publicity for Tim Lang is unmatched. The Spud of food policy.

Lang’s report for the National Preparedness Commission, published last year, found that the UK’s food system is extremely vulnerable to attack due to its concentration with a few large companies.

It found that the 12,284 supermarkets around the UK are “fed” by just 131 distribution centres.

These were a “sitting duck” for drone or cyber-attacks by malign states, he said: “The nine big retailers account for 94.5% of all retail food. That’s nine companies, using just 131 distribution centres. In drone war, that’s a sitting duck.”

See?

Oh Aye?

An increasingly acrimonious spat between Hungary and Ukraine has escalated further, as Budapest impounded two Ukrainian armoured bank vehicles carrying millions of euros of hard cash as well as bars of gold.

Hungary’s national tax and customs administration said it had opened a money-laundering investigation over the shipment, which it said was made up of $40m and €35m in cash, as well as 9kg of gold. It said one of those arrested was “a former Ukrainian intelligence service general”.

Umm

Oschadbank, Ukraine’s state savings bank, said its staff were transporting cash and gold between between Austria and Ukraine in a “routine trip”, carried out by land because of restrictions on air travel in Ukraine.

And, well, it’s true. People do, wholly legitimately, ship cash and gold around. The cash you can buy at an exchange kiosk must come from somewhere after all. But, you know

Now this, this, this is a strategic insight!

Thirdly, there is a very real risk that Israel and the USA will lose this war, as will the UK, as a result of its collateral involvement. Iran has been preparing for war for a very long period of time. It has a very large stockpile of admittedly low-grade missiles available to it, plus an enormous capacity to manufacture drones. Israeli and Western defence forces have not reacted in the way that the precedent in Ukraine should have suggested to be necessary, which is to create cheap anti-drone defence mechanisms. The consequence is that Israel and the USA are much more likely to run out of weapons than Iran is, leaving Iran with the potential capability of controlling this region militarily, which is just about the last thing that anyone would wish, given the nature of the regime in that country and its apparent indifference to imposing suffering through loss of human life.

It’s an intersting question.

UK must double down on renewables as wars drive up energy costs, experts say
Fossil fuel price surge after US-Israeli attacks on Iran prompts calls to end dependence on ‘volatile’ energy source

Should we have cheaper but volatile or more expensive and less volatile?

It’s possible to make philosophic arguments for both or either. Myself I think I’d prefer cheaper yet volatile. I also think most people would if only the choie were explained to them in this manner. Which, of course, it never is.

Anti-semitism in Ely

We now know from reliable sources that some claims already made, including that Iran launched a drone strike against the UK base on Cyprus, were false. This raises questions about where the drone in question was launched from, with the possibility that this was a false flag operation by Israel clearly being left hanging as a result.

The Jooos are just so cunning, eh?

Real tin foil hat stuff:

What we do know is that Trump began this believing that his success in Venezuela made him invincible, and that his need for a war to distract from the Epstein files was overwhelming.

And this?

And if people realise that leaders who are only concerned with their personal well-being should not be trusted, we might get a shift in politics.

There are, however, a great many maybes and straightforward doubts in those three statements. The simple fact is that war rarely produces good outcomes.

The question is when we will realise that, and when will our armed forces actually begin to doubt whether what they are asked to do is legal, beneficial, or appropriate to follow.

When that happens, we might get a total reappraisal of what defence means.

Sel-interest among politicians means the military should mutiny? There’s a reason that will never go away, eh?

All economics happens at the margin

Rachel Reeves’s plan to raise the minimum wage for young people will push up the cost of hiring them by almost £7,000.
Analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) warned that employers faced a 40pc real increase in costs under Labour’s proposals to scrap the youth rate of the minimum wage.

There will be some of those youngsters who are worth the extra £7k a year. There will be some who are not. Those who are not will not get a job.

Well done, eh?

There might be a reason I don’t write for the Telegraph business section

I laugh at them too much maybe?

Yet that doesn’t change the fact that the TG Jones moniker has fallen flat with the great British public. With shoppers increasingly staying away from the stores, it is hardly a shock that Modella is already drawing up drastic cost-saving measures – a move that is expected to lead to a sizable number of its shops being closed for good.
Judging by the feedback from Telegraph readers to the news, few people will mourn the chain’s fate. I expressed similar feelings when WH Smith announced it was getting out of the high street last year.
A visit to a WH Smith store is about the most soulless shopping experience that exists today, I said. Yet with hindsight, such sentiment may be a classic case of “be careful what you wish for”.
It no doubt sounds far-fetched, given the desperate state of some TG Jones stores, but the future of the high street could depend on their survival.
For decades, WH Smith was regarded as a high street “anchor tenant”: a household retailer that helps tether other, smaller businesses to town centres, because they drive a disproportionate amount of footfall to the area.
When these big names pull out from somewhere, a domino effect often occurs, prompting others to scramble for the exit.

Something that people don;t go to is not an anchor tenant. Obviously.

FFS, Telegraph

Michael Deacon
Don’t be fooled by the fall in net immigration
Starmer has no right to boast when highly-skilled Britons fleeing the country are being replaced by men in dinghies

It’s immigration, emigration, or net migration. But not net immigration.

Sadly, it’s not just the absence of subs on that headline:

Net immigration will be a lot lower than previously expected, predicts the Office for Budget Responsibility.

Sigh.

Ah, so they do grow up then?

Binge drinking rates among gen Z have risen sharply since their teenage years, according to research that challenges their reputation as “generation sensible”.

Almost seven in 10 (68%) 23-year-olds reported binge drinking in the past year, while nearly a third (29%) said they did so at least monthly, up from 10% at age 17.

While drug use is relatively limited in the teenage years, by their 20s almost half (49%) have used cannabis and a third (32%) have tried harder drugs such as cocaine, ketamine and ecstasy, analysis by University College London (UCL) found.

Bit late, but better than never.

They’re planning more than a little too much here

There are urban areas of England where no one lives within a 15-minute walk of nature, government data shows, as ministers scramble to meet their access to nature targets.

While the data shows 80% of people live within walking distance of green or blue spaces such as a river, park or woodland, it also reveals a disparity between rural and poorer urban areas.

Everyone will have to have access to green or blue space under the government’s environmental improvement plan, published at the end of last year.

Seriously, who let the gurning morons impose a target like that?

We’ve near no army nor navy left, The Musselmans are invading the beaches and government is measuring how many feet you live from a riverside walk? And then, get this, promising to make more?

The access minister, Sue Hayman, said: “Spending time in nature is so important for our mental and physical wellbeing, and this government is committed to delivering better access to nature for people across the country, no matter where they live.

“Access to nature still varies hugely between areas and we are working to make sure that this is a guarantee, not a postcode lottery. We have already taken action to improve access to nature by announcing the first of nine national river walks, the Mersey Valley Way and two new national forests.”

Fuck’s Sake. Hang the Lanyard Class

Well, sorta, maybe

Faced with a shortage of available land in Europe, reindustrialisation would necessitate new approaches to construction, and some seriously creative thinking. Could tomorrow’s production be enmeshed in novel ways in landscapes and even within our cities? What if a factory could move and mutate to build a product where and when it was needed? What if infrastructure doubled as protective environments for flora and fauna? Could we re-engineer our technologies to run on the overlooked resources around us, such as the kinetic energy created by movement on roads and sidewalks? (Tourist footfall would take on a new significance). There is enough necessity at the moment to mother some significant invention.

You’d need to have a significantly free market environment to be able to do that. Because there would have to be endless experimentation for it to be able to work. Most importantly you’d have to kill the licensing and permission Raj – REACH and on and on – so that people can change and experiment as the results of iteration 1 come in and iteration 2 is developed.

Therefore there’s absolutely no chance of it happening in Europe, of course.

Oh. Right.

This illegal war was about regime change. The best claim for it was that it might bring a better life for Iranians. There is no evidence that aerial warfare has ever delivered this outcome.

Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki. Going back to before ‘planes the Zanzibari war sure worked with a few well placed shells.

Cretin

The OBR is forecasting that in the short term, Bank of England base rates will fall to 3.25% (which looks less likely now for obvious reasons) and then return to 4%.

This matters. UK GDP (excluding the absurd measure for notional rents) is around £2,700 billion right now.

UK household financial wealth, excluding property wealth, might be very broadly similar right now (the data is out of date).

So, the economy is going to grow by 4%, and the minimum expected return on financial wealth is 4%.

The denominator in both cases is nearly the same.

Who captures all the gains from growth in that case? I think you can work that out.

Sigh. Without looking it up – so spare me corrections of details – household wealth is £7 trillion or so housing equity, that 2.5 tr or so financial wealth and also £6 trillion or so private pensions. By convention only those private pensions that are actually funded are included. Pass across and PAYE pensions – like doctors, state pension – are not.

The £6 trillion is invested that is. That’s actually what is measured, how much is invested in order to pay those private pensions. So, who is going to gain from that return to investments of 4%? Well, the vast majority of it will be pensions, won’t it?

Man’s a cretin.

Well, yes

The US military has destroyed 17 Iranian ships, including a submarine, since Saturday, Brad Cooper, the commander of the US Central Command, said late on Tuesday. “Today, there is not a single Iranian ship underway in the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, or Gulf of Oman,” he said in a video statement.

Shipping through the strait of Hormuz – typically a vital artery of the world economy, with about a fifth of oil supplies and seaborne gas tankers passing through it – has largely ground to a halt.

Iran has land based antiship missles. Quite how good they are, well. Would beat an unescorted tanker, fer sure. Often enough anyway. Get through an Aegis system? Almost certainly not.

But hanging about seems sensible enough….

But, but, we’re Speshul!

A bill to recognise English as an official language of New Zealand has cleared its first hurdle in parliament amid ridicule from opposition parties and linguists who say it is “unnecessary” and “cynical”.

The bill seeks to give English, which is spoken by 95% of the country, the same official status as te reo Māori (Māori language) and New Zealand sign language. The bill said the status and use of the existing official languages would not be affected.

How dare the normies, with their normie language, get what we speshul folk have?

And I do think it fun that sign language is official but English is not. Because, well, sign language is normally based upon an underlying and what is NZsl but upon English?

Typical

It was one of the most disproportional votes-to-seats results seen anywhere in the world. But then, nowhere in Europe but the UK still uses first past the post.

The first-past-the-post system was the fortress sustaining the old parties, but “small” party interlopers it was designed to keep out have stormed the walls, and could yet overrun the castle. YouGov finds that Nigel Farage could become prime minister on a 23% vote, against the strong wishes of three-quarters of the country. Voting has become a fruit machine with random results when tiny shifts bring cascading seats.

The consequences run deeper than fair voting or psephology. The primacy of a few voters in a few marginals has profoundly distorted the way we live. Our exceptional inequality, among the the worst in the developed world, is exacerbated by our two-party system. Still we suffer the after-effects of Thatcherism and austerity – extremist approaches that would be mitigated in a proportional system. Revealing research from Compass this week tracks how two-party politics began falling apart as more middle-class voters, also suffering from a cost-of-living squeeze, were ignored by a system that took them for granted but provided no better representation to low-income voters in urban seats.

As the results of democratic elections might bring about a winner Polly doesn’t like then and therefore the system of democracy must be changed.

Which is to wholly miss the point of elections, of democracy. They’re a way of changing the rulers without bloodshed. If you change the system so that the rulers casnnot be changed then that’s not democracy.

Isn’t this precious?

Between 2021 and 2025, Black nonbinary artist Sage Ni’Ja Whitson visited 91 locations across 15 states – in all of these sites a trans, gender nonconforming, or intersex individual had died, either by murder or suicide. At each site they conducted a ceremony of their own to bear witness to what had happened there.

“It was very challenging in ways that I’m continuing to mend from and rest with,” they said. “It is not ‘inexpensive’ on my body and spirit. That cost I knew would be there.”

I’ll invent a boogie, a rain dance, a prayer, a ceremony, which is very taxing upon me, then you all bow down to me as the artist.

Currently showing at Los Angeles’s California African American Museum (CAAM) is These Waking Glories, Whitson’s solo show displaying a variety of photos and other pieces in conjunction with these ceremonies. A moving and important bearing of witness to the violence that continues to ravage the communities of both racial and gender minorities, it is a powerful show that should be experienced.

Now, as we all know, some considerable portion of these dead are sex workers. Or, to use older language, trannies who may or may not have been wholly open about physical matters before proferring. Or even during. They are indeed individual and precious snowflakes because all humans are that. But tranny tart is a risky profession. It’s not obvious that tranny, as tranny, nor black, has much to do with it.

But, you know, art…..