LV hodie!

Happy Tenth Blogday To Us!

'Twas on the very day and moment, ten years ago, that I did my first post. Here we are, twelve thousand posts and five million pageviews later...

Thanks to all my fellow contributors and commenters (the two groups largely overlap)!

What I have noticed is that in the old days, we used to comment on each other's blogs, but nowadays, most people seem to have their favourite couple of blogs and only comment on those; and most bloggers only comment on their own blogs (I am as guilty of this as anybody).

The beginning of the end of democracy.

From the BBC:

Under the old system, one person in each household completed the registration for every resident eligible to vote. Now everyone has to register individually by providing their national insurance number and date of birth.

About 7.5 million people had already gone missing from the electoral register before the new system was introduced, but campaigners fear a further million have been disenfranchised.

The article helpfully contains a link to the government's register to vote page:

The deadline to register to vote in the general election is 20 April 2015.

NB, when I'm in charge and introduce a Citizen's Income, one of the minimal requirements will be that you are registered to vote at your current address, which would lead to 99% enfranchisement within a very short space of time.

Tesco Price Promise

I had a Sainsury's 1p off voucher recently and while rummaging through the vouchers before I went to the supermarket, I found one from Tesco as well.

Oh, and I'm 7² years old today.

Milestones

Last week, my oldest son had his ...th birthday and is now older than I was when he was born.

Just goes to show, eh?

Happy Sixth Blogday To Me Us

'Twas six years ago to the minute that I did my first tentative post... and here we are, six years and 8,400 posts later.

Big thanks to BobE and The Stigler for their regular posts; to Kj, Bayard Morgan Charles and Lola for their occasional posts and of course to everybody who comments, in particular the die-hard Homeys (i.e. Sobers and The Fat Bigot) who provide me with KLNs.

What is it with women and music?

Her Indoors spent about two hours clicking around her and my iTunes to compile a playlist to burn to a non-stop CD at her/our birthday/garden party, and this is what she/we ended up with...

Knowing me knowing you - ABBA
Take a chance on me - ABBA
Mamma mia - ABBA
Honey honey - ABBA
All that she wants - Ace of Base
Set Fire To The Rain - Adele
Valerie (AW) - Amy Winehouse
Summer of love - B-52's
Love shack - B-52's
Help - Beatles
Staying alive - Bee Gees
Piece of my heart (BK) - Beverley Knight
Irreplaceable - Beyoncé
Don't lie - Black Eyed Peas
Pump it - Black Eyed Peas
Mas que nada - Black Eyed Peas
I Gotta Feeling (BEP) - Black Eyed Peas
Meet Me Halfway - Black Eyed Peas
Just Can't Get Enough (BEP) - Black Eyed Peas
One love/people get ready - Bob Marley
Born to run - Bruce Springsteen
Kung fu fighting - Carl Douglas
Barbra Streisand - Duck Sauce
Anything could happen - Ellie Goulding
Dog Days Are Over - Florence & The Machine
We Are Young ft Janelle Monáe - Fun
I knew you were waiting - George Michael
Heart's A Mess - Gotye
Thanks For Your Time - Gotye
Learnalilgivinanlovin - Gotye
I Feel Better - Gotye
State Of The Art - Gotye
Bronte - Gotye
Somebody That I Used To Know ft. Kimbra - Gotye
Somebody That I Used To Know - Gotye Feat. Kimbra
Stereo Hearts - Gym Class Heroes
Broken strings ft Nelly Furtado - James Morrison
Brokenhearted - Karmin
Firework - Katy Perry
Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.) - Katy Perry
All Summer Long - Kid Rock
Born to die - Lana Del Ray
Ho Hey - Lumineers
Sweet home Alabama - Lynyrd Skynyrd
Hoedown Throwdown - Miley Cyrus
I Will Wait - Mumford & Sons
The Cave - Mumford & Sons
Little Lion man - Mumford & Sons
Mad - Ne-Yo
My baby just cares for me - Nina Simone
Stop crying your heart out - Oasis
Don't look back in anger - Oasis
Dance With Me Tonight - Olly Murs
What Makes You Beautiful - One Direction
Live While We're Young - One Direction
Heartbreak Down - P!nk
Raise your glass - P!nk
Just give me a reason ft Nate Ruess - P!nk
Pencil full of lead - Paolo Nutini
She said - Plan B
Gangnam Style - PSY
We will rock you - Queen
Place your hands - Reef
Keep on lovin' you - REO Speedwagon
We Found Love - Rihanna
Cheers (Drink To That) - Rihanna
Black Heart - StooShe
Black Heart - StooShe
Flood. The - Take That
Greatest Day - Take That
I Knew You Were Trouble - Taylor Swift
I knew you were trouble - Taylor Swift
I'm your man - Wham!
Club Tropicana - Wham!
Freedom (W) - Wham!
Young guns (go for it!) - Wham!
Wake me up before you go go - Wham!
This is love ft Eva Simmons - Will.i.am
We No Speak Americano - Yolanda B Cool & DCup

Pretty Satanic, huh?

At midnight yesterday, Her Indoors and I were poking bits of dead animals onto sticks and listening to Black Sabbath.
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We're having a party today, so she wanted to prepare about eighty chicken kebabs and beef kebabs (forty of each).

We didn't actually start until about eleven o'clock (we had to pick up some folding chairs from a friend first) and the skewering process ending up taking about two hours.

And Black Sabbath just happens to be the sort of music I like to listen to while carrying out monotonous-yet-somehow-rewarding tasks.

Killer Arguments Against LVT, Not (165)

In the context of nothing in particular (but it's my birthday and I'll post what I like), there is a very schizophrenic approach to taxes on income (i.e. income tax, NIC, VAT, corporation tax etc, which we can lump together as 'income tax').

When the Georgists say that income tax is a bad tax because it punishes effort, risk-taking, people making best use of the hand they are dealt etc, a lot of people will agree; but when we explain that we'd replace income tax with taxes on the rental value of land that people choose to occupy, they get all squiffy and say things like "At least if my income falls, my income tax bill goes down."

So what they really mean is that if they do well, it's down to hard work and shouldn't be punished with higher income tax; but if they do badly, that's down to external forces, bad luck, not their fault etc, and that they'd like society to compensate them for this bad luck with lower income tax.

Well, it's one or t'other, frankly. Claiming that when you are doing well it is because of your hard work and effort and when you are doing badly it is only because of bad luck is hypocritical to the point of being schizophrenic. The fact is that most people who do well have largely just been lucky (and I should know) and most people who fall on hard times are as hard working as the next man (or woman).

Under a Georgist system, where the main tax is LVT; we run a small government; and dish out most LVT revenues as a Citizen's Income, there's still a lot of luck involved - you'll always be better off for having been born in the UK in this century than in some ex-Communist, African or Islamic hell-hole (or in the UK in earlier centuries) - but that spreads the luck around a lot more evenly than the fact that 'you pay less income tax if you earn less'.

How much you have to pay in LVT is entirely down to you and not down to luck at all (you can choose where you want to live); and what you earn above and beyond that is yours to keep 100%.

What's not to like?

Ninety Three

Happy Fourth Blogday To Me

This whole blogging lark seems to get harder as you go on; but it gets more addictive in equal and opposite measure.

"We will rock you"

I took Her Indoors to see this musical for an early birthday present, and although I despise musicals in general and don't particularly like the music of Queen in particular, I must admit it was quite a pleasant experience.

Two points to note:

1. For some reason, they have done their best to airbrush Queen's bass player John Deacon out of history.

2. Unlike 'British' films or 'British' theatre productions (the quality of which is inversely proportional to the amount of subsidies they get), musicals do not get a penny in subsidies, but somehow, these theatres are more or less sold out, week after week and year after year, despite their high ticket prices (£60 for the front rows appears to be normal). If popularity or profitability is a measure of quality, then they beat 'Briitsh' films and 'British' theatre hands down. People flock from all over the world to see them, which in turn is good for our balance of trade and hotels in London etc.

Lazer mayhem

The Lad had his belated birthday party today here.

It was quite good fun I suppose, and I survived more than half of about eight different 'battles' without being 'killed' by simply finding the best hiding place and just sniping intermittently. Rather bizarrely, standing behind a tree worked best - but remember to keep your head and your 'gun', both of which are targets out of view.

But the constant squatting down behind [oil barrel, haystack etc], then jumping up for a second and squatting down again before somebody shoots you is quite tiring; it was awfully muddy in places; and we learn yet again that ten year old boys have no concept of tactics or co-ordination and it was only in one round that they/we exhibited some sort of team work. We 'won' that round hands down, which was rather gratifying.

This cheered me up

The Scottish Greens published a report on Land Value Tax today (which I haven't read yet) but I'm mentioned briefly on page 5.

So that's a nice birthday present, I suppose.

Ten reasons to hate the Tories (10)

Point 10 from Cameron's Blueprint for Britain was this:

10. We'll double magistrates' sentencing powers from six month to a year and make sure knife offenders can expect to go to jail. And we will get more police officers on the street by slashing paperwork, including the stop and account form.

JuliaM posts endless tales about ridiculously lenient sentencing in this country, so mucking about with maximum sentences is pointless; it's minimum sentences we ought to be thinking about*. The only politician I'd trust with this is Michael Howard, who was prepared to take on the whole "criminal law industry" wholesale and made them actually do their job rather than seeing it as a gravy train. And he got results. It was far from perfect, but he got results.

* UPDATE. Jackart in the comments says that "bureaucratically defined minimum sentences" are a tad illiberal. Maybe so, but can we make a start by ensuring that offenders actually serve the sentences that are currently being imposed, rather than a small fraction thereof or none at all? For examples see JuliaM.

As to the second sentence, as WOAR explained a couple of days ago:

The simplest way to get more officers on the street is to abolish the PCSOs. Each one costs approximately 2/3 the cost of a proper officer but in utility terms is less than half as useful plus many of them are a complete liability when they open their mouths in public. Three plastic plod costs £60k and offers 1.5 worth of utility value. Two real police officers cost £54k (starting) and offer 2.0 worth of utility value.

We lose value on every single PCSO. Madness. Don't worry about paperwork at this stage. Cut the PCSOs immediately.

I hope that you've found this weekend's series thought-provoking. No, I don't claim to absolutely right on absolutely everything, but I can say for sure that the Tories are absolutely wrong on nearly everything - the only bit of their blueprint that wasn't complete rubbish was the first half of point 8. Anyway, time for a birthday drink.

Happy Second Blogday To ... "Fisking The Bible"

Having today decided that the world has gone mad anyway, I thought I'd wish a Happy Second Blogday one of the most heroic - pointless, but heroic - 'blog projects of all time, Jackart's Fisking The Bible.

A project which he abandoned a while later, it appears.

Happy Second Blogday To Me

Although I cheerfully admit to being one of the ten per cent of husbands who's forgotten his wife's birthday more often than he cares to admit (two or three times in fourteen years, if you must know), I can easily remember my 'blogday because I started on 07/07/07.

Thanks to everybody who visits and comments or links to me (I always try to drop by and say 'Ta' if you do), the stats seem to have stabilised nicely:-----------------------
Right, enough of the mawkishness and back to business.

This week's Fun Online Poll asks which of the two major taxes on UK businesses is more damaging to the UK economy. Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Poll results: Afghanistan

Thanks to everybody who cast a vote in this week's FOP. Your/our views on the 'war' in Afghanistan were as follows:

It's pointless. Let's get our troops out ASAP. - 75%
Let's give it another year or two. - 5%
We can civilise Afghanistan by force, even if takes a decade. - 4%
We should occupy the country for ever, if that's what it takes. - 16%

I think that's pretty conclusive and accords with my own view.

Neil Craig commented thusly: "A clarification to my vote for #4. What it takes is killing bin Laden. I think he is dead already and we should say so get out but if he isn't we must stay."

Maybe he is, maybe he isn't, but I guess that offering a bounty of $x million for conclusive evidence as to his whereabouts/last resting place is a damn' sight cheaper (whether in terms of cash cost, lives or loss of national reputation). A sort of X-prize, if you will.
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This week's Fun Online Poll: Have you ever forgotten your wife's birthday?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Robots have birthdays too

Internet connection dodgy

Ye olde broadband in our house has been woeful slow since yesterday evening, making blogging frustrating to the point of impossible. And it's my birthday anyway so I might just log off for a day.