Skip to content

Antonio Nunes

Tee hee:

Portuguese smokers have been confined to the pavements since January 1, when new legislation banned smoking in many pubs and public places; so they were outraged to see a photograph of the man who had sponsored the legislation lighting up a cigar in a casino in the early hours of New Year’s Day.

António Nunes, the head of the Portuguese Food Standards Agency, who is charged with enforcing the new regulations, said that he had not realised they also applied to casinos.

They\’ve actually been very sensible here. If a bar wants to allow smoking they may: but they must have decent ventilation, proper extraction fans. Our local installed one a few days back, the man from the Ministry came around on New Year\’s Eve to sign off on it. They also have a sign in the window stating that they allow smoking, so those who do not wish to experience passive smoking know that they should look elsewhere.

Excellent in fact: the people have a choice.

Umm, You What?

Most odd:

In the essay, I argued that what is to be expected of a Conservative party, as a non-Conservative sees it, is a politics of national self-repair; the protection of a free society from itself; leadership; something more than the threadbare value system of the market; the setting of limits to corporate and financial-sector licence; the reinforcement of the ethic of citizen duty (not responsibility); crying a halt to the dismantling of public institutions; and a squaring-up to the advance of Islam.

So you\’re not a conservative, but you want to define what the conservative party should be about? And when that party, of whch you are not a member and do not support, doesn\’t act in the manner you think it ought to, you then say that party has failed you?

Aren\’t you supposed to be arguing for the policies you want in a party you do support? Or supporting a party that avows the policies you want?

Polly on the NHS

Take the productive ward scheme. The ward manager, a nurse, has reorganised everything so that colleagues spend 40% more time nursing – no longer interrupted on average 115 times a shift, with less form-filling and no more hunting for supplies.

Having a matron who is in charge of the ward. What an amazing innovation, eh? I wonder who thought of it?

The rest of it is simply how much better the NHS is than it was. Which is of course true. But nowhere does she get the point that the NHS is not as good as it could be: as evidenced by the fact that every other European nation of similar wealth has a better system because none of them use the insane centralisation of the NHS.

Told You So

This really isn\’t a surprise. People like David Pimental have been saying it for at least a decade.

Using biofuels made from corn, sugar cane and soy could have a greater environmental impact than burning fossil fuels, according to experts. Although the fuels themselves emit fewer greenhouse gases, they all have higher costs in terms of biodiversity loss and destruction of farmland.

The problems of climate change and the rising cost of oil have led to a race to develop environmentally-friendly biofuels, such as palm oil or ethanol derived from corn and sugar cane. The EU has proposed that 10% of all fuel used in transport should come from biofuels by 2020 and the emerging global market is expected to be worth billions of dollars a year.

And, as noted, the idiot politicians (the US Congress is in fact worse than the EU here, if such a thing can be believed) are insisting that such biofuels, which are worse for the environment than fossil fuels, must be used in order to protect us from the environmental effects of fossil fuels.

If you think that the politicians are going to protect us from climate change then you\’ve obviously not been paying attention.

There\’s a Simple Way To Do This

Grr:

Parents could be required to provide their children with high-speed internet access under plans being drawn up by ministers in partnership with some of the country\’s leading IT firms.

Jim Knight, the schools minister, said he is in talks with companies such as Microsoft, BT, Sky, Virgin and RM to help close the widening achievement gap between pupils from the richest and poorest families. More than one million children have no access to a computer at home.

Let\’s start from the premise that this actually is a good idea. OK, what\’s the best way of getting universal access to the web for all schoolchildren?

In an interview with the Guardian, Knight signalled that the government was putting pressure on IT firms to bring down the cost of equipment if internet connections are in effect made compulsory for nearly six million children.

Erm, no, that\’s probably not it.

I\’m rather out of date but I think you can get access for £10 a month or so? Great, add £2.50 to the child credit for every first child (we already have different amounts for first and further children, don\’t we?) and tell parents that they\’ve got to have said net access. Problem solved.

The only problem with this is that while it might be cheaper, more sensible and more efficient, it doesn\’t allow ministers to look good while sticking it to the capitalists: it also makes clear, because it has to be paid for from taxation, what the real cost is. Can\’t have that now, can we? People actually knowing what the cost of something is?

Really?

You sure?

Andrey Illarionov, a market reformer and Putin\’s economic advisor until his resignation two years ago, alleged that the Russian government\’s £75 billion Stabilisation Fund, created in 2004 to cushion the budget from a fall in oil prices, was being exploited by members of the ruling elite for their personal benefit.

He gave no details of how this allegedly occurred.

"The Stabilisation Fund, in the form in which it was created in which monies were accumulated, has ceased to exist. It has died. This is now a fund for increasing the personal wealth of specific individuals," he claimed in a radio interview.

Now that is a surprise!  Politicians get to control $ hundreds of billions and some lines their pockets?

Slap me down with a wet kipper.

Sigh.

A town\’s Olympic-style flame is to be replaced by a lightbulb because of the enormous gas bills and the carbon emissions it gives off.

The 15ft high Eternal Flame was a gift to Bournemouth, Dorset, from its local churches to mark the Millennium.

Burning continuously, it provided a focus for the town square – at a cost of £8,000 a year. Church officials also realised its emissions were harming the environment.

Nothing\’s too good for heroes, eh?

We\’re Killing Ourselves!

Look out for more restrictions on who can have NHS treatment: you\’ll need to have your ID card marked with the portions of fruit and vegetables you\’ve consumed each day before long.

Almost 70,000 deaths could be avoided every year if Britons followed healthy eating guidelines, a wide-ranging government report says.

However, it\’s a little difficult to take the figures on offer seriously.

The nation\’s poor diet costs the economy £10 billion, of which £7.7 billion comprises NHS treatment that could be avoided if people cut down on fatty and salty foods and ate more fresh fruit and vegetables.

There\’s a basic point about the NHS. Because it covers us all, for our lifetimes, it\’s rather difficult for us to cost it money by dying early.

Those who die prematurely would have lived for almost 10 years longer if they adhered to dietary advice, the report says.

Hmmm. Now, NHS spending per capita (from memory here, so hope I\’ve got it right) is some £1,800 a year. Pop your clogs 10 years early and the NHS thus saves £18,000 on you. And if you don\’t die of your unhealthy lifestyle, you\’re going to die of something else, something which may cost more or less than what you have got.

So while we can indeed say that the costs of treating those with these diet related diseases is £7.7 billion, when we do we\’re not actually being all that honest. For the amount saved by those 70,000 having 10 years of NHS treatment is £12 billion or so (please note, these are very rough numbers indeed, used only for comparison).

…the report says that if everybody ate healthily the economy would be £20 billion better off due to the reduced health care costs and extra years of productive life.

That\’s also a terribly suspect figure. We\’re told that it\’s 10 years of life being given up on average. The average lifespan is into the late 70s for men, early 80s for women. Whether we assume that this is before that extra 10 years or after it, those extra 10 years are all past the pensionable age. People at this time of life are not known as contributors to the economy (please note that this has nothing to do with the fact that rising lifespans are a great idea, we\’re talking solely about the financial calculations here), in fact, they\’re known as something of a drain on it. 70,000 people with another decade of the State pension is actually a cost of some £35 billion rather than a contribution to the productive side of the economy.

But don\’t worry, government policy is going to be determined by what\’s in that report, not what is actually true. Aren\’t we lucky?

So, Err, Rudy Giuliani Was Right?

You\’ll recall how Rudy Giuliani was mocked for his insistence that early treatment of prostate cancer enabled him to survive? The way in which everyone leapt up and down and insisted that the difference between the US and European numbers on years of survival was simply earlier diagnosis, not actually better outcomes?

Taking hormonal therapy early can help to slow the spread of prostate cancer by up to eight years, a study has shown.

Four months of hormone therapy delayed the spread of prostate cancer by eight years, American researchers report online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The effect of the treatment is to lower levels of the male sex hormone testosterone in the blood. It is an established treatment, but is generally given later in the course of the disease and for longer periods, when it can have damaging side-effects. “By taking a little bit of hormonal therapy early, patients may avoid having to take a lot of it later,” said Mack Roach, of the University of California in San Francisco, who led the team.

My word, seems he\’s right (even if for the wrong reasons).

Oliver James on Affluenza Again.

The paperback version of his book must be coming out as he\’s got another piece in the G about it:

In itself, this economic inequality does not cause mental illness. WHO studies show that some very inequitable developing nations, like Nigeria and China, also have the lowest prevalence of mental illness.

Glad we\’ve got that little correction for when the hardback came out I pointed something out:

But the assertion that it is inequality that causes the madness is what appears to be — if I can use the word — insane. Economists measure inequality using the Gini coefficient. A value of one means that one person has everything, the others nothing, while a value of zero means the equality of the grave. Denmark does have a low one by international standards, 0.247; the UK 0.36, the US 0.408. However, in a small problem for James, that for China is 0.447 and that for Nigeria is 0.506 (all World Bank figures, 2004).

But other than that it\’s the same old James. Capitalism makes us all depressed, boo hoo hoo.

But Selfish Capitalism stokes up relative materialism: unrealistic aspirations and the expectation that they can be fulfilled. It does so to stimulate consumerism in order to increase profits and promote short-term economic growth. Indeed, I maintain that high levels of mental illness are essential to Selfish Capitalism, because needy, miserable people make greedy consumers and can be more easily suckered into perfectionist, competitive workaholism.

Relative materialism? What is this other than a fancy name for keeping up with the Joneses? And does anyone really believe that this is something "caused" by capitalism? Or that it\’s something innate in human beings which capitalism allows the expression of? But my favourite part of the argument is this:

With overstimulated aspirations and expectations, the entrepreneurial fantasy society fosters the delusion that anyone can be Alan Sugar or Bill Gates, never mind that the actual likelihood of this occurring has diminished since the 1970s. A Briton turning 20 in 1978 was more likely than one doing so in 1990 to achieve upward mobility through education.

We\’re, umm, using a Harvard dropout and a man who left school at 16 as examples of upward mobility by education?

It is to giggle.

We\’ll Have to Shoot These Monkeys I\’m Afraid.

Male macaque monkeys "pay" for sex with females by grooming them, scientists have revealed.

The availability of females even affects the "price". Where there are fewer females, males are forced to groom their partners for up to twice as long before they are able to have sex, the research found.

For of course, the purchase of sex from females is to be made illegal.

But the reason for shooting them is not that they are breaking the law, oh no, it\’s that they are making Harriet Harman look stupid, and we can\’t have that now, can we, she does it so well herself. Ably assisted by Dennis MacShane, of course.

And We Were Doing So Well…

Having managed to start off the New Year with myself and Antonia Bance actually agreeing on a point we then get this:

7. Hundreds of new houses built in Oxford, hundreds of thousands nationally, and increased regulation to target profiteering and unscrupulous landlords

That\’s part of her wish list for the coming year. The problem is that the two aims are mutually contradictory. We actually want landlords to make a profit: that\’s what gives them the incentive to invest in a house and then rent it to people. Making more housing available (a good idea at a time of both rising population and a further, on top of that, rise in household formation as we live in smaller groups) means an expansion of the privately owned rental market. Thus less regulation, not more.

One of the beneficial changes over the past few decades has been the way in which the regulations on that market have been lifted. Assured tenancies, the abolition of "fair rent", essentially a move back in time, or, if you prefer, towards a more European market, by the destruction of the insane rules which pretty much destroyed the rental market after WWII.

We\’ve already in fact tried this experiment, regulating landlords, and it leads to the absence of housing available to rent. If we actually want more housing available, better that we not make the same mistake again, eh?

 Say NO to Digital ID

In September we launched the No to Digital ID Campaign. (@NoToDigitalID). We're now at 40,000 followers. Now were asking for financial help. Lets junk this dystopian nightmare in 2026. Lets start January running. 

Help the campaign today?  Click here