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The Tom Sawyer Principle (Politics)
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Grant



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I think it’s like Brexit. In the short term it will be crap. In the long term it will be better.
Maybe we will start making stuff again instead of leaving it to the Chinese
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Mick Harper
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I'm on the Chinese side. Cheers. The side of history.
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Mick Harper
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Interest rates go up 0.25%. Bank of England blames inflation

The sheer economic illiteracy of this is hard to beat. There is no causal relationship between interest rates and inflation. The only indirect one is that when inflation is high interest rates will tend to be high because otherwise people won't invest but this has no wider effect because the money they are getting back will be proportionally less valuable than the money they put in.

So why does the Bank of England (and everyone else) do this? Actually central banks sometimes put interest rates down to battle inflation. Since it makes no difference they might as well show they are doing something to earn their silver platters. What is particularly rich about this particular move -- aside from 0.25% being self-evidently irrelevant to a 10% inflation rate -- is that the inflation is not domestically generated so nothing the Bank of England does will affect it. But of course when those external pressures (you know Covid, sanctions, Ukraine war, climate change policies etc etc) cease and inflation returns to its customary 2-3% the Bank of England will have to start all over again.

One thing they will never do is to recognise that interest rates are a market mechanism to bring investors and borrowers into harmony and does the job great (including taking inflation into account). Why won't they ever do this? 'Cos the Bank of England, like all central banks, is both the biggest lender and the biggest borrower around so it sets interest rates in its own favour. Whether this is in anybody else's favour is not something they give a lot of thought to.
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Mick Harper
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Nice comment from someone at the EU heads-of-state meeting. "I hope Moldova does get in, we'll be back to twenty-eight members." Puts us in our place.
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Wile E. Coyote


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I am starting to have doubts about Zelensky, he wants to have close economic ties with Europe but Britain to organise Eurovision. I was assuming it would be the other way round, after all those weapons we have supplied.

BTW the joint militray pact between Britain and Finland, to assist the other in the case of Russian invasion. Last time I checked on the globe, aren't they a wee bit closer?
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Mick Harper
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Bo-Jo must have got the idea from Churchill when writing his biography. The Great Man (that is Churchill in this instance) proposed a military pact with Finland against Russia in 1939-40 but we had to plough through Norway and Sweden to get there. I'll quote the Cabinet Minutes

Cabinet: Won't that mean we'll be at war with Germany, Russia, Sweden and Norway, Winston?
The Great Man: So? Afraid of a bit of fighting, are you?"
Flunkey (entering the room): Finland and Russia have just made peace.
Cabinet: Phew.
(Churchill busts into tears)
Cabinet: If we make you Prime Minister, Winston, will you stop crying?
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Mick Harper
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A noxious moment for me during the weekly family Zoom session. A (politically despised) cousin said, à propos what we were discussing, "Anyway, Bo-Jo will dissolve Parliament rather than accept a vote of non-confidence from the 1922 Committee."
"He can't because of the Fixed Term Parliament Act," quoth I.
"It's been repealed, Mick."
"Bollocks," I said though I used a more Parliamentary term.
"Look it up."

So I did, to find "The Act was repealed so quietly, most people don't know it was." Finding oneself 'most people' is not something I am used to.
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Grant



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I didn’t know this but I was wondering why the media kept talking about when BJ would call an election.

Here’s another thing I only found out today. Did you know that the latest figures show that exports to the EU are now the highest since records began. That’s the official government stats from the Office of National Statistics.
You can bet that if they had been the lowest the BBC would have carried it as their lead item.
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Mick Harper
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There is one exception to 'when BJ would call an election' that nobody knows about. It is settled British constitutional practice that the sovereign can refuse a Prime Minister's request to dissolve Parliament by asking someone else to take over as Prime Minister if that person could command a majority. This would happen if, say, the Tories were baying for Johnson's blood and he was only dissolving Parliament to save his own political skin.

It would trigger a major constitutional crisis because "the Queen would be entering politics" but it has been done. The last time (I seem to remember) was an Australian governor-general refusing a dissolution to a Labour prime minister but it happens in times of, for instance, no overall majorities and minority governments.
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Mick Harper
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Taking Us For A Ride: The Uber Files (BBC2)

I still can't get my head round the unreasoning hatred that Uber evokes in liberal circles. Passengers seem to queue up for the service, drivers seem to queue up to drive for it, there do not seem to be any serious issues apart from the decimating of black cab drivers, who have never been a part of the natural constituency of liberals.

Yet the BBC feel they have to weigh in with a Panorama exposé which, as far as I could make out, consisted of Uber allegedly going in for some predatory pricing when they were first carving out market share (and we had a black cab driver's word for that), an EU commissioner working for them a few months before she was supposed to and some less than punctilious behaviour on Uber's part re the licensing of their drivers. And all this from 2014!

The only beefs since then were accusations of (mainly Tory) politicians having secret talks with Uber followed in each case by an official denial of any such talks taking place. No further evidence of what would be quite serious transgressions was offered. Nor why they were being held in the first place.

Truly, our liberal guardians are going so far off the boil it will soon be time to replace them with a new set of liberals. Now that would make a fine Panorama programme.
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Mick Harper
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Nadhim Zahawi is increasingly looking like someone who keeps a white cat in his cavernous estate in Chiselhurst, Kent. If we really are going to be increasing our defence spending there will be strident demands for a more muscular foreign policy or all those new rockets sitting in their silos will be redundant.

Only Miss 'Money' Penny Mordaunt can stop him.
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Mick Harper
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Tips to save water in the heat
from Thames Water

Hello,

The summer sun is sending temperatures soaring – and with it, demand for water across the region. Nine of the last 11 months have been drier than average in our area, which means the underground sources and rivers we rely on have less water than normal. That means saving water is good for the environment, as well as making sure there’s enough to go round.

Our teams are working around the clock to supply the water you need. And there are lots of simple ways you can help by using water wisely – even small changes can make a big difference. Here are just five ways to help, without spoiling the summer fun:


I was trying to decide whether this was the first time I have ever received a request from a company to use less of their product when I realised that if we don't cut down the bastards will have to spend billions at their end. Then I remembered they were monopoly capitalists subject only to a toothless government watchdog and that we would have to pay for it at our end if they had to. I have accordingly reduced my baths from once a week to once a fortnight.

As a gardenless minimalist recluse it is all I can offer. I'd cut it down to once a month if I thought the Tesco checkout lady wouldn't object.
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Mick Harper
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In America they glory in the idea that you can be born in a log cabin yet make it all the way to the White House. We do not have log cabins so our version is that you can be born over a chemists shop in Southampton, marry a billionaire's daughter and make it all the way to Number Ten.
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Mick Harper
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A fabulous discussion on Newsnght about 'economic inactivity.' and why Britain uniquely suffers from this condition. They manged not to mention the two causes:

1. Successive governments have wanted to trumpet 'full employment' so have encouraged unemployed people to reclassify themselves as something else. These something-elses are lumped together under the umbrella term 'economically inactive'.

2. Skiving Britons have been swift to take advantage of these innumerable state-sponsored dodges to become 'economically inactive' which means getting all the benefits of being unemployed without all the whip-cracking nuisances that being unemployed brings with it.

And how do I know all this? I've got this friend...
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Mick Harper wrote:
A fabulous discussion on Newsnght about 'economic inactivity.' and why Britain uniquely suffers from this condition.


Levels of those economically inactive in Britain are not uniquely high, they are at the same level as Germany and many other European nations, in actual fact way way better than most of Southern Europe.

BTW I would have thought that folks retiring early is a good thing?
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