Gott on Che
As long as the murderer hates the US then Gott loves him.
Update. Perfect comment there:
Where can I get a T-shirt of the bloke who shot him?
Quote of the Day
And I would never have mentioned Philip Toynbee’s suggestion that a bomb under the West Car park at Twickenham would set back fascism in England for a generation.
Can They Do This?
I would be surprised if they could:
Romania is to limit the right of young doctors to work abroad after government figures showed that almost half were leaving in search of better paid jobs, causing serious staff shortages, Eugen Nicolaescu, the Health Minister, said.
I get the point of what they\’re trying to do: after you\’ve paid to train someone you\’d like them to stick around. But freedom of movement within the EU means just that, doesn\’t it? Not just entry into another country, but the right to leave one?
Well Done The Planners!
We do need government, there really are things that cannot be done collectively and voluntarily. Things that require the compulsion that government can bring to bear.
Changes to medical training introduced since 2002 have been rushed, poorly led and implemented and are unlikely even to produce very good doctors, according to a new report.
Sir John Tooke, who chaired an independent inquiry set up by the Department of Health, said it had been a sorry episode from which nobody emerged with credit.
The new policy, called Modernising Medical Careers (MMC), was introduced without clear definition of what it was meant to achieve. Weak development, implementation and governance had made it worse. “Put simply, ‘good enough’ is not good enough,” Sir John writes. “Rather, in the interest of the health and wealth of the nation, we should aspire to excellence.”
Problems with MMC first became apparent when the computer-based application system used for selecting doctors for higher training failed this year. The Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) had to be abandoned, and the furore about it drew attention to wider defects. The report by Sir John, who is Dean of the Peninsula College of Medicine, will make uncomfortable reading for the department, and for Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, who was the main driving force behind MMC.
Aren\’t we lucky that the people who do this governing for us are both able to see when they are needed and then are so efficient in execution?
Supporting England
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has switched his allegiance to England following Scotland\’s exit.
"I will be supporting England," Brown said. "I think the victory over Australia was one of the great victories in rugby."
Gosh, thanks Gordo.
Iraqi Employees
God these people are shits. Our Lords and Masters. Prize, Grade A, bastards.
Yes, you can quote me on that.
So some people out here in Blogistan along with The Times have managed to get Gordon Brown to agree that there is indeed a moral case that those who worked for the British military in Iraq should not be left to be murdered by crazed religious lunatics. Good. That they had to be persuaded of this makes them dribbly bits, bastards, but not quite shits nor Grade A Prize Bastards.
Now they\’re quibbling over how long someone must have been working for us. Only those with 12 months service: doesn\’t matter that they\’re in danger of being murdered, tortured to death with power drills, having their eyes gouged out, no, only if they\’ve filled that little bureaucratic box do we have any moral responsibility to them.
That does make them shits and Grade A Bastards. The death is no less painful, the torture no less ghastly, the moral responsibility no less, just because someone put in 11 months and 30 days now is it?
Strange that a Son of the Manse, a child of the Kirk, cannot remember that the labourer is worthy of his hire. And we did hire them.
Anyone know how we can force a good dose of Ex-Lax into the body politic?
Better ideas are here.
Household Income
Following on from this morning\’s wonders about houshold income, I\’ve had a response. For those who didn\’t see it, I was wondering about this:
While the average household gross income has climbed over the past decade from £34,796 to £53,835, people have far less of that money to spend each month after they have paid essential bills.
That gross income looks very high indeed for the average household.
I\’ve had a response from the people who did the original report:
Average household income in 2005 was £49,335. This was calculated using ONS figures for the total gross income for the UK as a whole in 2005 and dividing this by the number of households in the UK in 2005. The ONS data for 1997 to 2005 was used to calculate a compound annual growth rate of 4.461%. This was used to calculate the 2007 estimation.
The estimation part looks fine. But running these numbers backwards (24 million households times £50 k a year gives £1.2 trillion, roughly GDP) makes me think that they\’ve used GDP for "total gross income". Now technically you can do that to give an approximation. I\’ve forgotten the technical descriptions of GDP and trying to look them up doesn\’t give me what I want: the adjustments needed to give a more accurate figure. Aren\’t total household incomes equal to consumption equal to value added? Or do we need to adjust for retained profits, savings, etc? The perils of only knowing a little perhaps.
Anyway, that\’s how we get that very high figure, GDP divided by the number of households. It\’s high because it\’s the mean, not the median, and because, well, we don\’t normally define household income that way anyway.
You What?
And so the great herds of turbo badgers swept majestically down the slopes of our hillsides into the fertile valleys below, there to sweep across the great plains, go twice around the Wrekin and then apply for jobs in the very call-centres of our souls. But not once did such vicissitudes once deter us from our overwhelming desire to pour lukewarm custard over the naked chiropodist held captive in the car park of The Pervert’s Appendage, for today is – as you should all know –
Screwing the Soldiers
Sadly, it\’s not just our own MOD that screws those it sends to fight:
I no longer believe in coincidences when it comes to stuff like this. Whoever wrote the order for 729 days knew precisely what he or she was doing.
No, I don\’t believe it\’s a coincidence either.
Timmy Elsewhere
Two at The Business.
The 250 richest Britons of all time and the Tyranny of the Majority.
So Robbie\’s Not Quit Yet Then?
When I finish writing this, I shall pour a glass of something red; it will shortly be read by a nice chap at The Times who will have recently returned from a fag break.
What Do We Do About Rising Sea Levels?
So we\’re told that rising sea levels (and in the SE of England, the ongoing sinking of the land) are going to lead to losses of land. Of farmland, of buildings, of the very ability of the species to survive (TM Al Gore). So what should we do about it?
In the most ambitious and expensive project of its type, the RSPB intends to puncture sea defences around Wallasea island, near Southend, and turn 728 hectares (1,800 acres) of farmland into a mosaic of saltmarsh, creeks and mudflats – making mainland Britain just a little bit smaller.
Er, breach the sea walls and invite that rising sea in.
Excellent, don\’t you think?
Household Disposable Income Down
So says a report from uSwitch:
In 1997, when Labour came to power, people were left with 34.5 per cent of their gross income once they had paid taxes, national insurance, mortgage or rent. Now they are left with 32.6 per cent, says a report by uSwitch, a price comparison website.
It is the latest survey to highlight how millions of households have failed to benefit from the strong economy because of rising taxes and escalating bills. Ernst & Young, the accountants, calculated this year that the average family had £838 left to spend each month, compared to £899 four years ago.
There\’s three things to say about this.
While the average household gross income has climbed over the past decade from £34,796 to £53,835, people have far less of that money to spend each month after they have paid essential bills.
That gross income looks very high indeed for the average household. Might they be talking about the mean rather than the median? Rolling around the back of my mind I have the idea that the median US household income is somewhere in the $40-$50k a year range and I really don\’t think that the UK is richer than the US, nor that (as an alternative explanation) the average UK household is more than twice the size of the average American one.
The second is that they\’re rather confusing two things:
Increases have hit four key areas in the past 10 years. Petrol — often the biggest cost for a family after their housing — has increased by 55 per cent and phone and internet bills have risen 77 per cent as millions more use broadband and mobile phones.
So there\’s a change in the composition of "essential spending" as well as a change in the prices.
Finally, the Treasury is probably correct here:
He said: "As a result of tax and benefit measures introduced by the Government, this year all households will be on average £1,000 a year better off in real terms and families with children will be on average £1,550 a year better off in real terms, compared to 1997."
For the original calculations don\’t seem to (although as I can\’t find the report I can\’t check) include benefits, only tax. But this is untrue:
A Treasury spokesman denied that Government tax policies had eaten into incomes.
Of course the tax policies have eaten into incomes. It\’s the benefit policies that might have amended this, but tax per se must eat into incomes.
But I think the biggest fault is in their headline figure for average household incomes. I really don\’t believe that that is the median. Median individual earnings are £26 k a year aren\’t they? And it is most certainly not true that the average household has two incomes at that median now, is it?
Nick Cohen: The Ooops Edition
Nick Cohen reported on Sunday that Dan Hardie is both a Doctoe and a reservist. One of these two is true, although unhelpful to mention. The other isn\’t. Don\’t forget Tuesday, still as important as ever.
Insane Comment of the Day
Over at the old place. On a post about colony collapse disorder we get this:
And what is causing the weakened immune system that has opened them up to a viral infection?
Cell phones. Same thing that caused my chronic Lyme Disease.
Err, Lyme Disease is a bacterial disease spread by tick bites.
Rugby World Cup
It’s likely that the all Black and Wallaby squads will be on the same flight home. I wonder if they’ll agree to ask for asylum in each other’s country?
Yesterday\’s Australian Sports Column
Ahem:
THE simple fact is the Wallabies are a better rugby team than England…..
In the space of a few short weeks, England has gone from swaggering to staggering and now, with its last roll of the dice, the best it can come up with to defeat Australia is to pick a pack of bully boys and an endearingly earnest five-eighth who doesn\’t kick heads but goals instead…..
That\’s how it is shaping again tonight, although one senses a historic adjustment in the Wallabies\’ methods. Where in the past they were obliged to use hit-and-run tactics, tonight, boasting a scrum that even rival flanker Lewis Moody concedes may be the strongest Australia has assembled, they will engage England head-on. …..
That\’s not to say that\’s all they will do. There is considerably more to this Australian side than muscle. But the belief within the camp is that beyond the bully boys and Wilkinson, England doesn\’t have much at all…..
Hence, the quickest and most effective way of defeating England is to confront its two great strengths and nullify them.
Sounds simple. And if the Wallabies are anywhere near to achieving their often-stated aim of having the best pack in world rugby, they could indeed do the business tonight with considerable audacity and some alacrity……
Snigger.
To Spend is to Tax
Worth remembering that:
We should not be surprised by such profligacy. In 2001 Brown stated that the UK would borrow a total of £28bn between 2001 and 2006. He ended up borrowing £129bn during that period. So his "prediction" was more than £100bn astray.
It\’s not just the tax rises, it\’s also the rise in borrowings: and, even more than that, the rise in promises of future spending (on pensions and the like) which are not being accrued.
Future taxes have gone up by vastly more than current ones have.