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When even financial journalists can’t do numbers

Investors pump $2.6 billion into Ancestry.com

Err, no, really, no:

Provo-based Ancestry.com said Friday that two investment firms, Silver Lake and GIC, have invested $2.6 billion into the family-history company.

Just, no.

GIC Pte, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, and technology investor Silver Lake Management LLC will buy into Ancestry.com LLC., the U.S. genealogy company said.
The investment values Provo Utah-based Ancestry at about $2.6 billion, it said in a press release Friday.

Yes, that’s better.

CIA tests new post-natal abortion technique

Briar Woods High School, a half-hour drive from the CIA’s headquarters in Northern Virginia, might have provided an ideal training ground for the agency’s bomb-sniffing dogs. Its labyrinthine hallways and voluminous classrooms are home to something that can wreak havoc for the canines: polished floors, which cause dogs to slip and lose their focus as they hunt for explosives.

That was one reason the school, which educates nearly 1,700 students in Ashburn, played host to a CIA dog team for a training exercise while students were away for spring break last week, according to the Loudoun County school system. But the choice to go to a public school for the quiet exercise has led to an only-in-Washington embarrassment for the elite spy agency, which left explosive material behind in the engine compartment of a school bus that then shuttled special-needs schoolchildren for two days this week.

A mechanic discovered and removed the explosive putty – which county Supervisor Koran Saines, D-Sterling, said was the demolition explosive C-4 – during a routine bus maintenance check Wednesday. Until then, no one noticed that it was missing.

If people won’t get rid of the special needs kids in utero then the government must take action, right?

Although one does rather suspect that this was planned by the Amanduh section of that venerable organisation.

Ignorance, such ignorance

Oh, just do one Morrisons.

This was my initial reaction to the supermarket’s mysteriously offensive recruitment ad for northern actors which specifically ruled out applicants with a Liverpool accent. Being a scouser, I bridled instantly (before quickly having a word with myself to “calm down, calm down”) at the thought of yet another brazen assault on the good people of Liverpool. Being a journalist (who writes headlines for a living), my next thought was: “Fewer reasons to shop at Morrisons”.

It soon became clear, however, that this was not a simple “demonise-all-scousers moment”. It was directed at actors. Actors who can probably pull off quite a few regional northern accents. So why the discrimination?

Posted by “a third party” on Casting Networks International website, it appealed for “proper working-class people” for a Morrisons publicity campaign. “They should all be warm and likeable,” it went on. “But not at all like the characters from Benefits Street. They should not sound or look posh. And nobody from Liverpool, please.”

The deplorable language used to stereotype different types of ‘working class’ people is pure class-based discrimination
The crass, gratuitous nature of the words jump out. Like being stopped in the street and hit with a tirade of puerile, outdated incoherence. Growing up against a backdrop of the Thatcherite “managed decline” of the city of Liverpool, I have plenty of personal experience of such nonsense. In my quest for a first job as a reporter, I ended up being interviewed for a news agency role. It went OK until the interviewer, as if struck by a paroxysm of offensiveness, blurted out: “Just one final thing … you don’t write the way you speak, do you?”

A new twist on the “what do you call a scouser in a suit?” gag.

Seriously, don’t be a twat.

It’s not that Morrisons, the agency are biased or discriminating. It’s that they recognise the rest of us are. The rest of the country doesn’t like the scouse accent. Despises it in fact. Thus it doesn’t work well in advertising stuff.

Le Fin.

It’s an interesting starting point isn’t it?

The wealthiest 20% of Britain’s earners will receive almost as much support from the state through the “shadow welfare” of generous tax-breaks by 2020, as the poorest fifth take home in benefits, according to a new analysis by the Fabian Society.
….
From the perspective of disposable income it makes no difference whether the government gives you a tax allowance or a cash payment,” he said. “The government must explain how it can justify giving more money to working couples through the ‘shadow welfare’ of tax reliefs than to the unemployed through benefits.”

Not taxing people is the same as taxing others to give people money. That is, the starting point here is that all belongs to the State and you only get what you’re given.

Hmm, no, let’s start hanging people who think that way, shall we?

How would you like £3,166 a year of free money from the government? Sounds too good to be true? Well if you’re in a reasonably paid job that’s exactly what you’ll be getting when the new financial year starts in April. This sum is the cash value of two huge tax breaks, the income tax personal allowance, which will exempt £11,000 of taxable earnings, and its equivalent in the national insurance system.

Yes, hang them.

Well, no, not going to work

Isil terrorists are planning to use drones to spray nuclear material over Western cities in a horrific “dirty bomb” attack, David Cameron has warned.

World leaders are concerned that jihadists want to buy basic drones that are widely available online to transport radioactive material into the heart of major cities in a strike that could kill thousands.

What are they going to spray that would kill thousands?

Nuclear and radiation just don’t work that way. Chucking a few hundred grammes of something around just doesn’t kill people. Not thousands. Could cause problems, cause chaos even, but kill? Nah.

From our 0.2 of a professor

It now looks as if it could be said that the panic is over. I beg to differ. Indices do not tell the whole story.

First that is because they can be manipulated. Share buy backs are, for example, a deliberate exercise in share price inflation.

Sigh:

In the FTSE indices, share prices are weighted by market capitalisation,

Share buybacks raise the share price, ceteris paribus. That’s the point of them. But they raise the price by reducing the number of shares in issue. That’s the point of them. Thus the effect, ceteris paribus, of the share buyback upon market capitalisation, and thus the index, will be zero.

It’s very sensible, candidly, to have people who know nothing about banking running a bank

The Co-operative Bank has posted an annual loss of £610m, more than double the previous year as misconduct costs rose and the lender continued to shrink.
Losses ballooned last year compared with a statutory pre-tax loss of £264.2m in 2014 as income dropped after the sale of riskier assets in an attempt to return the bank to health.

The bank took a hit from conduct charges, which increased over the year by £92.5m to £193.7m after it was forced to set aside further provisions for payment protection insurance mis-selling.
The Co-operative Bank was pulled from the brink of collapse in 2013 after a £1.5bn capital black hole was uncovered.

To argue, as the authorities belatedly did, that people who had the first clue about banking should be involved in the management of a bank is just neoliberal sophistry.

Daily Mail’s astonishing discovery

If you don’t fancy yoghurt or porridge, a multiseed and raisin muffin from Cafe Nero doesn’t sound like it would ruin your diet.
Packed with sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, linseeds, millet seeds, poppyseeds and raisins, it sounds like a relatively healthy choice for breakfast on the go.
However, it contains a whopping 475 calories and 33.6g of sugar – far higher than a can of cola. It also contains a massive 22g of fat.

Cake has sugar in it.

Astonishing, isn’t it?

Polly and economics

It’s funny, but then how else can a man dispose of some £2.5m a year? The eye-popping size of his salary is more of an issue than what he spends it on. No one is worth that.

Oddly, his employers think he is. And who other than his employers should be deciding his value?

JK Rowling has written fewer words over fewer years and yet earns very much more. Who should be deciding her income other than her employers, her readers?

Spotting an April Fool

Well, here’s one:

Britain will be the fat man of Europe within a decade after the largest ever obesity study found that almost four in 10 people will be dangerously overweight by 2025.

For the first time there are more obese people than underweight people in the world as bad diets and lack of exercise combine to create an unstoppable health time-bomb.

Health experts said the crisis in Britain was now a ‘national tragedy’ and blamed the government for failing to bring in higher taxes on sugary foods and drinks.

Like all good Fools it starts off sounding like something we’re regularly being told. It’s when it gets explained further that we see that it’s obviously a spoof:

Researchers at Imperial College London said the true health impact of poor lifestyles was being masked in the UK by statins and beta-blockers which lower blood pressure and cut cholesterol and are now taken by millions of older people.

But they warned that within ten years so many people will be severely obese that such drugs will stop working and surgery will be the only option to prevent disease and early death.

Drugs will stop working if more people take them? And the killer blow:

Obesity currently costs the health service £47 billion a year, just under half the entire NHS budget.

Great spoof. Starting out with what some would call reasonable and then spiraling off into absolute nonsense.

Stump thinking

According to the FT the trading revenue of most investment banks collapsed in the first quarter of this year

OK. Different post:

The UK is home to more than 75% of Europe’s top paid bankers

If investment banking profits fall then bankers’ pay will fall. At least, it would, if they were still being paid with bonuses. Problem solved, eh?

This is fun too:

Those watching the steel industry should take note. That adds value,

Since when is making a loss adding value?

Misunderstanding to happen in 3….2….1….

The Associated Press news agency entered a formal cooperation with the Hitler regime in the 1930s, supplying American newspapers with material directly produced and selected by the Nazi propaganda ministry, archive material unearthed by a German historian has revealed.

How long before this migrates into insisting that the Daily Mail did (not that it’s record on the point was all that great).

Not everyone being bright enough to note that Associated Press and Associated Newspapers are different organisations.

Tuna flavoured beer!

Why not combine two male enjoyments into one product?

A Polish company has set up a crowd-funding page to raise money for a new brand of beer which it claims will be made with bacteria taken from a woman’s vagina.
The Order of Yoni – which takes its name from the Sanskrit word for vagina – is asking for £118,000 (150,000 Euros) to launch ‘Bottled Instinct’, a drink which contains the ‘quintessence of femininity’.
A post on crowd-sourcing website Indie Go Go claims the beer will be made from the ‘lactic acid bacteria’ of Czech model Alexandra Brendlova, who appears in the adverts in negligee.

Slightly weirdly I know someone who has dated Brendlova. No, no news on how the beer will taste, sorry.

Who couldn’t see this coming?

Doctors should have the right to take organs from patients who want to die so they can be used in transplant surgery, a prominent medical researcher has suggested.
Those who want to be killed should be sedated in hospital then allowed to die after the removal of their vital organs, according to the proposal published by a British-based medical ethics journal.
Using organs for transplant surgery from patients who have been helped to die is allowed in Belgium and Holland, the European countries where euthanasia is legal.
But ‘dead donor’ rules mean there must be a gap between the death of the patient and the removal of organs, with the delay meaning their quality may decline.

And there’s people out there who tell us that slippery slope arguments aren’t valid in logic.

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