Yankee displeasure

Buck House wants to impose a dress code on the American press corps.  From a New York website (here):

It's the year 2014, yet Buckingham Palace has issued a proclamation to its colonies in the New World, which is awaiting a visit from Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince William and Kate Middleton.

"Journalists wishing to cover Royal engagements, whether in the United Kingdom or abroad, should comply with the dress code on formal occasions out of respect for the guests of The Queen, or any other member of the Royal Family," said an order aimed at reporters planning to write about Will and Kate's December trip. "Smart attire for men includes the wearing of a jacket and tie, and for women a trouser or skirt suit. Those wearing jeans or trainers will not be admitted and casually dressed members of the media will be turned away. This also applies to technicians."

First of all, what are "trainers" or, for that matter, "technicians"? And second, why should the United States' press corps — who barely bother to brush the muffin crumbs off their polo shirts before lobbing questions at the president of the United States — schlep extra pieces of clothing to work just so they can make small talk with a (perfectly nice-seeming) British air ambulance pilot-in-training and a former chain-store accessories buyer?

God forbid that the future king of England should have to answer questions from a reporter dressed in jeans and a t-shirt.  Respect, bro, I think?

 

The appliance of science

It is many many years since I played rugby.  Playing for the Fifths Extra B XV was a relatively straightforward affair.  Nowadays, rugby is more complicated:

Until fairly recently the lineout was divided into two groups – the jumping trio, and the hooker and the rest. Now it’s divided into groups of two, three and three and each of those three groups has different jobs at the first, second and third breakdowns after the lineout is completed.

At the first, the first to the breakdown will be seven and eight; at the second it will be the two non-jumping forwards and the hooker; finally at the third it’ll be the jumper and the two lifters. Simple so far? Well, that is the formula if the throw is to the back of the line out, and it further changes as the game moves on beyond the three areas nominated by the attacking side for where they want the breakdowns to be. And, of course, it changes again for defensive lineouts.

Simply, anyone playing in the back row has to understand those protocols and how they change on the hoof, something which is difficult enough for guys who have been around the block a few times. But it’s when the game becomes more fluid, the ball manipulating defence, that things get complicated and when instinct has to take over.

As group after group deal with the series of breakdowns, so the others go “round the corner” keeping the move going before a good back-row senses it’s time to reap the reward for all the hard work. They have to present themselves as an attacking option. Done instinctively – watch Kieran Read or Richie McCaw – and there is a chance; delay and you’re buried because the opposition is mirroring your actions and will be only a sniff away.

Wow ...

George is not a rhetorician

Hyperbole: exaggeration for effect, not to be taken literally.

The BBC reports:

Asked about spending cuts to come in the next parliament, Mr Osborne told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I would have thought the BBC had learnt from the last four years that its totally hyperbolic coverage of spending cuts has not been matched by what's actually happened in our country."

The BBC's concern about the seriousness of the forthcoming cuts is far from hyperbolic, as is shown by the subsequent comments of the IFS:

The Institute for Fiscal Studies' Paul Johnson said the cuts would be "on a colossal scale", would mean a "fundamental reimagining of the role of the state" 

   

Making policy on the back of a fag packet

Oh yes, the google tax.  What the Chancellor actually said:

Today, I am introducing a 25% tax on profits generated by multinationals from economic activity here in the UK which they then artificially shift out of the country; that is not fair to other British firms and it is not fair to the British people either—today, we are putting a stop to it. My message is consistent and clear: low taxes; but low taxes that will be paid. Britain has led the world on this agenda and we do so again today. This new diverted profits tax will raise more than £1 billion over the next five years.

 More than a bit sketchy.  How will HMRC assess the amount of profits that are diverted, ie artificially shifted out of the UK?  The Guardian illustrates the point:

Google paid just £20m tax in the UK last year. But its actual British revenues were £5.6bn. The group as a whole has a profit margin of 20%, suggesting the company’s real profits in the UK could have been as high as £1.2bn. Taxed at the proposed 25% rate, this would deliver £280m a year in revenues for the Treasury from just one company. But the government expects to collect no more than £360m a year from the diverted profits tax.

Essentially, profits are what is left after deducting cost from revenues; traditionally these costs would include those of production and administration; more controversially, they might include the cost of intra-company loans and rights payments, some of which may be legitimate and some of which less so.  Where does Osborne draw the line?  And how will it impact on international double taxation agreements between governments?

Have Osborne and the Treasury thought it through?

   

Silly me

I didn't know that the lovely Samantha was imaginary ...

   

George is not a bogyman?

Really?  Rather counter-intuitively, The Guardian looks for the better side of the Chancellor:

It is said, for example, that when the government is in difficulty and MPs are called in for pep talks, Osborne impresses them with knowledge of their constituency issues and policy hobby horses. He asks what he can do for them; the prime minister reminds them of what they are expected to do for him. George procures loyalty, Dave demands it. (Theseasoning of marginal seats with new roads ahead of the autumn statement is proof that it pays to have the chancellor’s ear.)

But there is more to Osborne’s attentiveness than vote-buying. He has an intellectual curiosity and a strategic interest in the future of conservatism that is often camouflaged by a predilection for tactical gimmickry. He understands that the Tory “modernisation” project he and Cameron started in opposition failed because it came to be associated with niche liberal preoccupations: the environment, gay rights, overseas aid. That allowed traditionalists to cast the leadership as champions of snooty metropolitan elitism – a charge that fertilised the growth of Ukip.

The chancellor is indeed an urban liberal. He is a native Londoner and a believer in globalised capitalism as a wellspring of freedom and opportunity, not a scourge from which people need protection. He is also a pragmatic pro-European, arguing behind closed doors for a model of British membership of the EU as the lead player of an outer tier of countries spared the federalising momentum of the single currency.

Moderate Tories see Osborne as a bulwark against the drift towards full-bore anti-Brussels mania. “George is capable of showing some leg to the sceptics, but he doesn’t really have any truck with the anti-immigration rhetoric,” says one Osbornite MP.

I remain to be convinced.  But perhaps I am blinded by Osborne's obsession with tactical ploys and his indulgence towards hard right economics.

 

Music of the week

I can think of a worse epitaph

Ruth Rendell on PD James (here):

She will always live through her books. But for me she will be also be remembered for being such a nice woman.

   

Taxing

Well, it's a start:

The Scottish parliament is to be handed direct control over billions of pounds of income tax and welfare benefits after an £11bn cross-party deal which will lead to the biggest shakeup to Britain’s taxation system in the modern era.

The historic move, which had been resisted by the Labour leadership in London, means powers to set income tax rates and bands are to be wholly devolved to Holyrood as the pro-UK parties move to outflank the Scottish National party, which has surged in popularity since the referendum on Scottish independence.

But not all the way;

But Ed Miliband and Ed Balls, who are expected to offer broad support for the commission while saying the details will need to be studied with care, have decided to bite the bullet to avoid a further slide in Labour support in Scotland.

It is understood that Balls won two important concessions that will give comfort to the Labour leadership in London. The personal tax allowance – the amount of income people can earn before they pay tax – will remain a UK matter that will continue to be decided by the chancellor of exchequer and voted on by MPs at Westminster.

This will make it impossible for a Scottish finance secretary to do what chancellors have done in the past – announce an income tax cut and pay for it by changing the personal allowance.

In the second key concession, it is understood that the commission will say that there is still a UK income tax system.

It may well be the case that "there is still a UK income tax system" but that unitary system will potentially have to cope with making differential tax deductions from employees according to their country of residence.  I do not know enough about the technicalities, but I imagine that will amount to a massive change in payroll systems for those companies which have employees in both Scotland and England, as well as for the Inland Revenue tax coding systems.

But let us await the details to be announced later this morning.

   

Music of the week

Wot, no reindeer?

Oh dear:

Quote of the day

Lily Allen (here):

Lily Allen has become the latest artist to criticise the Band Aid single in aid of the Ebola crisis, revealing that she refused to appear on it because she considered it smug and preferred to donate “actual money”.

...

The outspoken Allen has previously described Band Aid’s co-founder, Bob Geldof, as a “sanctimonious prat”, but she still received a request to appear on the latest incarnation of the single, released 30 years after the original.

“It’s difficult to give an explanation why I didn’t do it without sounding like a complete cunt,” she told the Mail on Sunday.

Good for her.

   

Vote Tory, get UKIP?

Interesting times:

Cameron would prefer not to share power with Ukip. What matters is the price at which he could bring himself to do it in an emergency. Does he distance himself from Farage out of rhetorical expediency or because he finds the man and his party fundamentally objectionable? Is there a line of anti-European, anti-immigrant rhetoric he won’t cross?

The answer to those questions – and how a majority of Tory MPs might answer them – will tell undecided voters a lot about the character of the party and its leader. And the question will get harder to avoid. The Tories have been eager to argue that supporting Ukip could accidentally ease Miliband’s path to power, in the belief that such a prospect will send dissident Conservative voters scurrying home to Cameron’s camp. But the proposition can just as easily be reversed as a warning to anyone who thinks Ukip rhetoric is beyond the pale but is tempted to back the Tories. Vote Cameron, Get Farage? The prime minister used to rule it out. It is revealing that he no longer can.

    

Turning back the clock

Charlie won't shut up:

Prince Charles is ready to reshape the monarch’s role when he becomes king and make “heartfelt interventions” in national life in contrast to the Queen’s taciturn discretion on public affairs, his allies have said.

In signs of an emerging strategy that could risk carrying over the controversy about his alleged meddling in politics into his kingship, sources close to the heir say he is set to continue to express concerns and ask questions about issues that matter to him, such as the future of farming and the environment, partly because he believes he has a duty to relay public opinion to those in power.

“He will be true to his beliefs and contributions,” said a well-placed source who has known him for many years. “Rather than a complete reinvention to become a monarch in the mould of his mother, the strategy will be to try and continue with his heartfelt interventions, albeit checking each for tone and content to ensure it does not damage the monarchy. Speeches will have to pass the following test: would it seem odd because the Queen wouldn’t have said it or would it seem dangerous?”

Vladi No-mates

I doubt if the modern day Ebenezer Scrooge enjoyed his pre-Christmas holiday in Australia:

Vladimir Putin quit the G20 summit in Brisbane early saying he needed to get back to work in Moscow on Monday after enduring hours of browbeating by a succession of Western leaders urging him to drop his support for secessionists in eastern Ukraine.

What we need now is for the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Future to visit the Kremlin ...

 

Rosetta and Philae

The Guardian gets carried away with itself:

The human instinct to anthropomorphise does not confine itself to cute animals, as anyone who has seen the film Wall-E can testify. If Pixar could make us well up for a waste-disposing robot, it’s little wonder the European Space Agency has had us empathising with a lander ejected from its “mothership”, identifiable only by its “spindly leg”. In those nervous hours, many will have been rooting for Philae, imagining it on that cold, hard surface yearning for sunlight, its beeps of data slowly petering out as its strength faded.

   

Doesn't sound like fun

That sandwich factory that's been hiring Hungarians:

Working in Greencore’s Northampton factory is a chilling business. In temperatures ranging from distinctly nippy to sub-zero, employees work shifts of up to 12 hours, often overnight, laying thousands of pieces of tomato on sandwiches for customers including Marks & Spencer, Waitrose and Asda.

The money isn’t good. Workers who pass their three-month probation earn “cold money” to compensate for the teeth-chattering temperatures. An employee on the minimum wage gets an extra 24p an hour for chillier conditions, 48p if their environment is classed as cold and 68p if they are in a freezer. Greencore says few workers stay on the minimum wage.

But the boss class does alright:

Greencore’s boss Patrick Coveney was paid £1.3m last year, including £626,000 salary and £418,000 bonus. 

Still, I suppose that working for Greencore is better than plucking the leaves - one by one - off the trees outside Parliament.     
   

Speed bonnie boat ...

As Alex becomes the king over the water.  Steve Bell at his best.

 

Music of the week

More in sorrow rather than in anger

Quote of the day

From Mrs Cameron's diary:

Well I said to Mummy everything is getting *quite* Shakespearean, that part about uneasy lying the whatever, she’s like is there a prime minister in King Lear, I was like, well I would ask Govey except it is totally his fault, & Theresa’s, obvs, Dave feels dreadfully let down, even Mr Cobber could have been more helpful? Considering what he is paid? Dave was like, Lynton, what do I DO, Mr Cobber’s like, not a clue mate, that May bird what do you expect, women eh, but you said the speccy one whatsisname was a genius? Dave’s like, well Govey IS, kind of, Mr Cobber is like, suit yourself mate, sorting your fecking nutters is way above my pay grade, but word of advice? Dave’s like, please, what is it Lynton? Mr Cobber’s like, that penguin suit, was you auditioning for a John Lewis ad, haha Lynton’s joke, but seriously, strategist hat on, just don’t, OK, fucks up the optics, now if you’ll excuse me I need to talk to a Mr Fullbrook about some fags?

Bit of a circus

The Guardian neatly explains the shambles in the House of Commons the night before last:

It was parliament at its best, which is also its worst. The debate was passionate, the drama intense. And no one beyond the chamber could reasonably be expected to understand what the hell was going on. The short version: MPs arrived in the Commons on Monday afternoon expecting a debate on the European arrest warrant. They discovered that the government motion had been worded to cover a range of other European Union criminal justice measures – but not the thing Eurosceptics most wanted to argue over.

The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, deployed an ancient procedural device to derail the whole debate (on the grounds that it was on the wrong rails to begin with). So the question before MPs became whether to vote to not vote on something that was not the thing they had come to vote on in the first place.

Irate Eurosceptics threatened to side with Labour. Conservative whips fired off panicky text messages summoning absent MPs. David Cameron had to abandon the Lord Mayor of London’s banqueting table and race to the Commons, striding through the lobby in white tie and tail coat. It was the right costume for a rarefied legislative farce.

Legislative farce indeed.  Do the politicians ever contemplate how their actions appear to the general public?   Is it any wonder that confidence in the mother of parliaments is diminishing by the day?

   

   

Quote of the day

Miliband indulges his inner Baldrick:

 “Labour will fight and win this election street by street, house by house, taking our case to the people on every issue … As we enter the last lap before the general election, Labour will show in towns and cities across Britain that we have a plan to answer the deep problems faced by so many families."

But is it a cunning plan?

Smoke and mirrors

I don't blame him for putting a bit of spin on the result. But even The Spectator is doubtful:

Here’s what Osborne left out: the UK will still owe the full £1.7 billion, only not all in December, and would be able to quickly offset the cost with its rebate on EU contributions.

EU Commission vice president Kristalina Georgieva explained at a press conference later on Friday that the EU plans to amend its budget rules to allow for flexibility in ‘exceptional years’, when gross income exceeds previous estimates as the UK’s did this budget year. For the UK, Georgieva said this means the payment period for the £1.7 billion sum ‘will be stretched into the next year, and when this happens, then the payment and the rebate on the payment could converge.’

But does Osborne need to look so damned pleased with himself?

 

All talk and no trousers

How much worse does it have to get?  He talks big but does very little:

The European Central Bank is ready to pump up to €1tn (£782bn) of fresh stimulus into the flagging eurozone economy to ward off a dangerous deflationary spiral, Mario Draghi has signalled.

Draghi, the ECB’s president, said on Thursday that the bank’s governing council was unanimously willing to announce more unconventional measures, signalling the possibility of creating electronic money – or quantitative easing – should a deteriorating economy make it necessary.

Speaking in Frankfurt, he said: “Should it become necessary to further address risks of too prolonged a period of low inflation, the governing council is unanimous in its commitment to using additional unconventional instruments within its mandate. “The governing council has tasked ECB staff and the relevant eurosystem committees with ensuring the timely preparation of further measures to be implemented, if needed.”

And the band played believe it if you like ...

   

Pass the sick bag

The benefits of EU immigration

This is worth remembering the next time UKIP or the Tories start banging on about the iniquities of migrants from the EU and their cost to the public purse:

European migrants to the UK are not a drain on Britain’s finances and pay out far more in taxes than they receive in state benefits, a new study has revealed.

The research by two leading migration economists at University College also reveals that Britain is uniquely successful, even more than Germany, in attracting the most highly skilled and highly educated migrants in Europe.

The study, the Fiscal Impact of Immigration to the UK, published in the Economic Journal, reveals that more than 60% of new migrants from western and southern Europe are now university graduates. The educational levels of east Europeans who come to Britain are also improving with 25% of recent arrivals having completed a degree compared with 24% of the UK-born workforce.

It says that European migrants made a net contribution of £20bn to UK public finances between 2000 and 2011. Those from the original 15 EU countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain, contributed 64% – £15bn more in taxes than they received in welfare – while east European migrants contributed 12%, equivalent to £5bn more.

Do you suppose it might lead to the UK government adopting a more sensible approach to EU matters?  No, nor do I.

 

Pig farming

Makes my eyes water:

Music of the week

As ever, like ...




h/t Paul

It depends on who talked to him last

It's a bit of a mess.  First he waves a big stick and then he puts it away.   The Guardian reports:

David Cameron has been warned by German chancellor Angela Merkel that she would rather see the UK leave the European Union than change freedom of movement rules, according to reports.

Downing Street on Sunday did not deny that the conversation had taken place, after German newspaper Der Spiegel said Merkel had rejected Cameron’s demands for a cap on unskilled migrants. Sources told the newspaper that the chancellor said demands for any changes to freedom of movement rules represented a “point of no return” and that this would be it for the UK’s membership.

Over the weekend, the Sunday Times also reported that the prime minister has dropped plans for quotas in a bid to placate the Germans and that Cameron is now looking at whether the government can ask EU immigrants to leave the country unless they can support themselves within three months of arriving in the UK.

...

It comes amid speculation that Cameron is rowing back from his focus and tough language on immigration amid fears that the Conservatives will never be able to go as far as Ukip supporters want. 

Perhaps if Mr Cameron spent more time on the substance and less on the appearance, he might avoid getting stuck in cul de sacs ...

 

Nicola's dreams come true?

It may be just another opinion poll but the cat would appear to be among the pigeons:

Labour is facing the prospect of political annihilation in Scotland at the next election, a new poll suggests today, losing more than thirty of its seats in Westminster to the SNP.

The Ipsos Mori survey, commissioned by Scottish Television, found Labour in Scotland is currently polling at just 23 per cent while support for the SNP has surged to 52 per cent.

If replicated at the General Election it would leave Labour with just four Scottish MPs down from its current 41 seats. In contrast it would see the SNP win 54 seats compared to its current six MPs.

The Tories would lose the only seat they currently hold in Scotland while the Lib Dems would lose all but one of its 11 current Scottish MPs.

Leaving the SNP holding the balance of power at Westminster?  That would really put the ba' on the slates ...

It gets Serious

You don't suppose people might go to jail?

The Serious Fraud Office has launched a formal criminal investigation into accounting practices at Tesco, which led to a £263m profit overstatement at the UK’s biggest retailer.

The inquiry, which was confirmed by the watchdog on Wednesday will supercede an investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the City regulator which has been halted with immediate effect. It is not clear whether it will affect the launch of an inquiry by the accountancy watchdog, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), which is also being considered.

The question to which I would like an answer is this: while Tesco were cooking the books artificially inflating their profits (allegedly), what were their auditors, PwC (formerly Price Waterhouse Coopers) doing?

  

Photo of the day

h/t Heather

Dad rock

The Guardian adopts a patronising tone:

They are the bands that form the core of most dusty vinyl collections, the soundtrack to many a lost or fading youth. But this Christmas record labels are pinning many of their hopes on rock’s back catalogue to bring in sales, with forthcoming releases by everyone from the Who and Pink Floyd to Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen.

As music companies begin their push for Christmas – their most profitable period; December accounted for just over a fifth of all records sold in 2013 – it seems ’tis the season for the return of “Dad rock”, with deluxe re-releases of classic Led Zeppelin albums leading the charge. It’s a genre many of whose adherents still purchase albums rather than streaming tracks or playlists.

I suppose I should be grateful that they do not describe it as "Grandad rock".  Some of us OAPs are still groovers, man.

 

Parliamentary Question of the day

Kenneth Clarke on the EU's demand for an extra £1.7 billion (here):

May I sympathise with the Prime Minister on being taken by surprise on a subject that everybody in the Foreign Office and the Treasury must have known was coming along for the past five months ...

   

Let them drown

Cynical?  Heartless?  Mean-minded?  The Guardian reports:

Britain will not support any future search and rescue operations to prevent migrants and refugees drowning in the Mediterranean, claiming they simply encourage more people to attempt the dangerous sea crossing, Foreign Office ministers have quietly announced.

Refugee and human rights organisations reacted with anger to the official British refusal to support a sustained European search and rescue operation to prevent further mass migrant drownings, saying it would contribute to more people dying needlessly on Europe’s doorstep.

...

British policy was quietly spelled out in a recent House of Lords written answer by the new Foreign Office minister, Lady Anelay: “We do not support planned search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean,” she said, adding that the government believed there was “an unintended ‘pull factor’, encouraging more migrants to attempt the dangerous sea crossing and thereby leading to more tragic and unnecessary deaths”.

Anelay said: “The government believes the most effective way to prevent refugees and migrants attempting this dangerous crossing is to focus our attention on countries of origin and transit, as well as taking steps to fight the people smugglers who wilfully put lives at risk by packing migrants into unseaworthy boats.”

Shameful.

The beautiful game

With a front line of Messy, Nae Mair and Jaws, how can Barcelona lose?

A house divided will not stand

Currently, the Labour Party has 40 Scottish MPs at Westminster.  How many will it have after next May?  Fewer, I guess.  And this will certainly not help:

Johann Lamont is to stand down as leader of the Scottish Labour party, after describing some of her Westminster colleagues as dinosaurs who do not understand the politics they are facing since the referendum.

At the end of a week in which two former Labour first ministers expressed grave concerns about the future of the party, Lamont accused colleagues of trying to run Scotland “like a branch office of London”.

It is understood that she was unhappy that the general secretary of Scottish Labour, Ian Price, was to be removed from office without her being consulted.

Unless the Labour leadership in Westminster takes a more sympathetic attitude towards the party in Scotland, it is heading for more trouble.  It is far from impossible to see the Scottish Labour Party seeking independence from its London HQ.  


 

Parliamentary Question of the day

From here:

Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab): A few days before her appointment, the rail Minister wrote to her predecessor about proposals that direct services to London from Bedwyn and Pewsey would cease as a result of electrification proposals that she described as “mad”. Will she tell the House whether she has now received a reply from herself, whether she has had an opportunity to read it and whether she agrees with herself?

Claire Perry: The hon. Gentleman has rightly pointed out that one of my important local campaigning priorities is the maintenance of those vital direct links, but as he will know, as a former Minister, owing to ministerial propriety I can no longer directly comment on or investigate those links. I am delighted to say, however, that electrification and investment on that network is an important priority for this Government.

     

Music of the week

Nonpareil:

You can take the girl out of Morningside ...

Ms Fiona Woolf CBE, Lord Mayor of London, claims that she is not a member of the establishment.

Aye well.  Good luck with that, lass.

 

Painting oneself into a corner

The Prime Minister is fashioning a stick with which to beat himself:

Seen from Brussels, Cameron’s first problem is that no one knows what he wants. Writing in the Financial Times last November, he called for a policy shift on freedom of movement within the EU by making it more difficult for the poor, not in the current 28 EU states but in new countries which might join. The right to free movement should be linked to average national wealth levels in the countries joining the EU, he said.

(There are in fact no plans for the foreseeable future for any new member states.)

But it is not even clear that Cameron himself knows what he wants,  He is planning an announcement but the details (and the timing) are far from settled.  The position is further complicated by the fact that the government's policy on the EU appears increasingly to be driven by short term electoral considerations.

No 10 sources declined to go into detail about the prime minister’s planned speech. But it is understood Cameron will go further than his landmark Bloomberg speech of January 2013, when he announced plans to reform the relationship with the EU and offered a referendum in 2017, but made no mention of immigration.

The prime minister later addressed EU immigration in a Financial Times article in November 2013 but suggested restrictions on current EU citizens would be limited to curbing benefit tourism.

Pro-European Tories are alarmed because they believe the prime minister keeps changing his position under pressure from Ukip and Eurosceptics in their own party. They say he initially resisted holding an in/out EU referendum before backing down in the Bloomberg speech. He then suggested restrictions on immigration would apply only to future EU member states, but is now preparing to say they will apply to current member states.

So what will he say?  The Eurosceptics will expect him to put up serious barriers to the free movement of labour - barriers which will be unacceptable to other EU member states with whom Cameron hopes (in theory) to negotiate EU reform.  Damned if he does; damned if he doesn't.

 

Doesn't sound like fun

Sex and the antiarch:

The first act of copulation has been traced back to ancient animals that were endowed with such cumbersome sexual organs they had to mate side by side.

Fossilised features of antiarch fish suggest that early intercourse was not the smoothest of affairs, with males faced with the task of steering their bony L-shaped organs between twin genital plates that adorned the females like tiny cheese graters.

No mention of love or kisses,  Nor is it surprising that the practice fell into disuse:

The discovery of such ancient copulation means that sex with internal fertilisation evolved early on in the history of vertebrates but was then lost, with fish reverting back to spawning in water, and then evolved again in a different way.

   

Rewards and punishment

CityAM reports:

BANKERS need bonuses to create incentives to behave well, and the EU’s efforts to stamp them out are harming this goal, the Bank of England’s Andrew Bailey said last night.

Stepping up the prudential reg­ulat­ion authority’s campaign against the bonus cap, Bailey argued that the cap was a “bad policy”.

He told the City of London’s banquet at the Mansion House: “Let me be blunt, the bonus cap is the wrong policy, the debate around it is misguided, and the best thing I can say about allowances is that they are a response to a bad policy.

“I will not win friends in some places for saying this, but it dismays me to see a debate which is at times so divorced from the heart of the matter, which is setting appropriate incentives by putting a meaningful amount of pay at risk.”

Bailey wants bankers to receive bonuses for good performance, but for the payouts to be given out over many years in shares so that bad behaviour can be punished with the removal of shares.

Think about it for a moment:  "Bankers need bonuses to create incentives to behave well".  So, if they don't get bonuses, they will not behave well?  In most other walks of life, if you do not behave well, you will receive your P45.

But bankers and their ilk are somehow different.  Their enormous salaries are not sufficient to guarantee good behaviour; they need something extra.  On this reasoning, perhaps nurses or teachers or checkout girls should also be given bonuses.

Meanwhile, the suspicion remains that the high heidyins in the banking world collect their bonuses regardless of their performance.

   

What to do about drones?

Much soul-searching on the part of the football authorities:

The abandonment of Tuesday’s Serbia v Albania match after a drone carrying a sectarian flag was flown over the pitch has prompted fears of copycat stunts at football grounds in the UK.

The Football League has written to the Civil Aviation Authority, which regulates unmanned as well as conventional aircraft, asking it for guidance on the usage of drones around football grounds. The Premier League is understood to share the Football League’s concerns and is also in communication with them about the issue.

The former Labour minister Tom Watson, who chairs an all-party parliamentary group on drones, said the incident highlighted the dangers of the unregulated proliferation of the use of unmanned aircraft. He said: “The disruption caused by a lone drone with a cam and flag underscores the need for comprehensive review of drone use and regulation, as the APPG on drones have advocated.” He added: “This is the tip of the iceberg.”

Not sure if there is any practical solution.  When you can buy a drone for less than fifty quid at Tesco, pandora's box is well and truly opened.

 

Tanking

Yikes!  This is getting serious: the FTSE 100 is falling like a stone.

 

Music of the week

Heartrending:

Strategic mistake?

Aye, well.  It may please the Tories' core support, but it is not likely to attract the uncommitted:

David Cameron said he would like to ensure that only the “very wealthy” pay inheritance tax as he voiced support for raising the threshold at which the tax is paid.

The prime minister said he would like to ease pressure on people who do not regard themselves as “in any way the mega-rich” but whose estates are subject to the tax.

George Osborne transformed Tory fortunes at the party’s conference in 2007 – and spooked Gordon Brown into abandoning plans to call an early general election – with a proposal to raise the inheritance tax threshold to £1m. This would have been doubled to £2m for couples.

But the pledge was quietly dropped after the 2010 general election in the coalition negotiations as the policy appeared out of place in times of austerity. This means that inheritance tax of 40% has to be paid on estates worth more than £325,000, or £650,000 for couples.

I rather doubt if many of us will be popping our clogs with £325K in the kitty.  And, even then, you only pay 40% on the amount by which your estate exceeds £325K.  Besides, the "very wealthy" have lawyers and accountants to enable avoidance of inheritance tax.

Finally, what about the deficit?  Can we afford to reduce the tax take?

A reason to regret the No vote in the indyref

Horror of horrors.  From the Red Box (here):

Survation pops up with a national survey showing them [UKIP] on 25 per cent, just six points behind both Labour and the Tories. That would give Farage 128 MPs! Ukip are on 16 and 17 per cent in two other polls.

Lord Ashcroft, the Tory peer and pollster, said the key to Ukip fortunes is Rochester, where Reckless is seeking re-election. “I do not think you can discount any possibility if Reckless wins,” he said. 

Oh dear ...

Quote of the day

Simon Jenkins (here):

I cannot recall a conflict so swamped by incoherence as the one in northern Iraq. The awfulness of Isis has given the something-must-be-done-even-if-it’s-stupid lobby an ostensibly crushing moral ascendancy. The right takes comfort in faux belligerence: David Cameron’s party conference speech frothed with “evil people, pure and simple”; it dripped with killed children, raped women, genocides and beheadings. He declared that “some people seem to think we can opt out of this. We can’t. There is no walk-on-by option.”

He then walked on by. He suggested that a bit of bombing would do the trick while conceding that “troops on the frontline” would be “Iraqis, Kurds and Syrians fighting for the safe and democratic future they deserve”. None would be British. The adjectives were apocalyptic, the response cosmetic.

Too damn right.

 

Going through the motions?

Is this really for the protection of the public?  Or is it just to make them feel safer?

Travellers arriving at Heathrow and Gatwick from west Africa are to be screened for symptoms of Ebola, Downing Street announced on Thursday night after a day of confusion over the government’s response to the virus that has claimed more than 3,800 lives.

People travelling from the worst-affected countries – Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea – will face a questionnaire about their recent travel history, who they have been in contact with and their onward travel arrangements.

Medical staff will be deployed to check some travellers’ body temperature to ascertain if they have fever, one of the early symptoms of the illness. Rail passengers arriving in Kent and London on the Eurostar from Paris and Brussels will also be screened.

As far as I am aware, there are no direct flights to the UK from Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea.  And, even if there were, someone may be incubating the disease without displaying any symptoms and would therefore slip through any screening.  Furthermore, what about all those potential carriers who access the UK at other airports or by ferry?

Dog's dinner

I have been meaning to comment upon the latest developments at Rangers FC:

Ashley has parked his tanks on the front lawns at Ibrox where he has launched a bid to have the Rangers chief executive, Graham Wallace, and director Philip Nash removed from the club’s plc board.

This Glaswegian power struggle represents the latest attempt at expanding the Sports Direct owner’s football empire which, apart from encompassing Newcastle, already includes a minority involvement with Oldham Athletic and an almost 9% holding in Rangers.

Ashley made his move to unseat Wallace and Nash only six days after increasing his stake in the financially troubled Glasgow club from around 5%. The sports retail tycoon has now called for an emergency general meeting to vote on his proposals but the current Rangers plc board are proving as resistant to his charms as many Newcastle fans and have declared they will endeavour to block this demand.

While there is believed to be strong support for Ashley in certain quarters within Ibrox – most notably from Sandy Easdale, the chairman of the club’s football board – Wallace has been talking to a consortium led by Dave King, a South Africa-based businessman, over a potential multmillion-pound bailout at the Scottish Championship club.

Yet unless King finally makes his long mooted move, Rangers may ultimately have little option but to rely on Ashley, who first invested in 2012 and is now the second-biggest shareholder. Last month it was revealed that he had gained control of the club’s retail division and, even more significantly, has bought naming rights to Ibrox from the club’s former chief executive Charles Green for £1. Green recently conceded there would be nothing to stop him re-naming the ground The Sports Direct Arena.

Something of a mess.  I am unable to discern if there are goodies and baddies in this stramash - I suspect that they are all baddies.  Sad that a once great Scottish institution has sunk so low.

It will end in tears ...

    

Music of the week

Classic:

The BBC's drive to the bottom

From The Observer (here):

There's one problem with Evan Davis's Newsnight that the new Paxo Nice can't do anything about: being an expert, he understands complicated things – like economics. Why, he was once the BBC's neo-Keynesian guru. So put him on interview duty after David Cameron's latest tax pledges and who is he given to talk to? Duncan Weldon, Newsnight's own economics correspondent, who gets out a pair of toy scales and shows Evan how deficit reduction and tax giveaways have to balance. See, they go up and down. And why on earth is this drivelling conversation taking place, when Evan a) knows it all and b) could tell us about it in 15 straight seconds?

Dumbing down ...

Speech of the week

Warren and me

We all make mistakes:

Renowned US investor Warren Buffett has said he made a “huge mistake” by investing in Tesco, as the problems mount at Britain’s largest retailer.

Tesco shares have slumped 45% this year as the supermarket issued four shock profit warnings and last week became embroiled in an accounting scandal, admitting it had overstated its profits by £250m. The retailer has been the worst performer in the FTSE 100 index this year and its shares are at an 11-year low.

While I have rather fewer Tesco shares than Mr Buffett, I know exactly how he feels ...

 

Fox among the chickens?

The Guardian reports:

The government has been accused of a “cosy love-in with big business” after it appointed a former executive of oil giant BP to a new role running the civil service.

John Manzoni was given the £190,000-a-year job as the government’s first ever chief executive of Whitehall, despite criticism of his safety record at BP following the Texas refinery explosion and his last company, Talisman, being fined over 50 alleged health and safety violations connected with fracking.

I  have no idea if Mr Manzoni will be any better than the other private sector business types brought in to "improve" civil service management.  But he would do well to avoid this sort of meaningless guff:

“I am excited to take up this post at the heart of government at this crucial time,” Manzoni said. “My priority is building on the existing momentum to strengthen the execution muscle of Whitehall and embed a sustainable productivity agenda across government."

Perhaps, as a start, he might learn to speak English..

Who is now the fantasist?

CityAM is full of praise for the Prime Minister's speech yesterday:

Cameron’s [speech] will be remembered for the sheer number of major fiscal policy announcements it contained. Indeed, old fashioned message discipline ensured that, over the course of Conservative party conference, every speech and policy was built around the theme of economic growth. Reforming welfare? Encouraging work. Apprenticeships? Plugging the skills gap. Pension tax relief? Rewarding those who do the right thing.

With his speech yesterday, the Prime Minister added radical tax cuts into the mix. And make no mistake; increasing the income tax personal allowance to £12,500 is pretty radical, not least because of how expensive it is to the Exchequer. Indeed, for the same annual cost, the chancellor could have abolished inheritance tax or capital gains tax. It is, however, a more elegant way to help the low paid than a dramatic rise in the minimum wage, which could cost jobs in sectors where the productivity gains are simply not there to support it.

Increasing the threshold at which the 40 per cent rate of income tax kicks in to £50,000 is another welcome move, but it comes with a few glaring caveats. First, the policy is an aspiration, contingent on a majority Tory government being elected. In other words, whereas Lib Dem support for raising the personal allowance can probably be taken for granted, there’s no guarantee that they’d support similar relief for the squeezed middle.

Of course, if Miliband had made the same speech, promising unfunded tax cuts, he would have been excoriated for fantasy economics.  But then  life's like that ...

Chinese inscrutability

So, Daddy. what did you do for the National Holiday celebration?

Well, son, I made an anal examination of the bottoms of 10,000 pigeons.

I guess it's a shitty old life, Daddy.

(From here:

... as the ruling Communist party celebrates its National Day holiday on Wednesday – the anniversary of Mao Zedong declaring the People’s Republic of China in 1949 – it has made clear that not even birds are free from scrutiny.

The People’s Daily, a famously staid Communist party mouthpiece, tweeted a picture of a proud-looking dove above the caption: “10,000 pigeons go through anal security check for suspicious objects Tue, ready to be released on National Day on Wed”. It did not explain what the “suspicious objects” might include.)

   

The economics of war

War has always been an expensive business.  Here is an account of the RAF's operation yesterday:

“In the course of an armed reconnaissance mission from RAF Akrotiri, two Tornados were tasked to assist Kurdish troops in north-west Iraq who were under attack from Isil (Isis) terrorists”, the MoD said in a statement.

It said the RAF patrol identified an Isis heavy weapon position that was attacking Kurdish ground forces.

A Paveway IV guided bomb was used to attack the Isis position. The Tornado patrol subsequently identified an Isis armed pick-up truck in the same area and conducted an attack on the vehicle using a Brimstone missile.

According to this website, the cost of a Paveway bomb is £22,000, while that of a Brimstone missile is £100,000.  Is it value for money to spend £122,000 in order to destroy a heavy machjne gun and a pick-up truck?  And that is before you add in the cost of the flights at £35,000 per Tornado per hour.  To put it another way, every time a pair of Tornados fly a sortie of about six hours the taxpayer is spending £420,000 before taking account of any bombs and missiles.  A campaign lasting two or three years might become extremely expensive.