Bremoaners and Brexiteers shooting each other in the foot.

Going back to that BRC letter...

Falling back on to WTO rules would also increase the cost of sourcing from beyond the EU. The import cost of women’s clothing from Bangladesh would be 12% higher, while Chilean wine would be 14% dearer for importers.

Yes, we would expect the UK to remain a member of the WTO which is an advisory/co-ordinating body rather than a supra-national quasi-government. The obvious point is that the WTO has no rule stipulating minimum or default tariffs.

(Nobody questioned why the BRC specifically mentioned Bangladeshi clothes or Chilean wine. It turns out that they were cherry picking:

Bangladesh has been a WTO member since 1995 and, as a least developed country, benefits from the EU's "Everything but Arms" arrangement, which grants duty free, quota free access for all exports, except arms and ammunition.

The EU and Chile concluded an Association Agreement in 2002, which included a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement that entered into force in February 2003. The EU-Chile Free Trade Agreement is broad and comprehensive and covers all the areas of EU-Chile trade relations.)

Daniel Hannan, who is good on principles but useless on facts fell for it, as gleefully reported by The Daily Mirror, and tweeted thusly:

This is idiotic. Chilean wine 14% more expensive? It's currently subject to a 32% EU tariff, which we can now scrap.

Haha! cry the Bremoaners, he didn't know that there was an EU-Chile FTA! Others pointed out that the EU default tarrif on wine is 8p per bottle (although some official sources did incorrectly give the figure as 32%, which is about par for the course for EU tariffs on food, so a forgivable mistake on Hannan's part). So, they argue, Hannan's lack of grasp of finer detail undermines his general point! No it doesn't. His general point was and is sound.

And so bloody what? The BRC were clearly cherry picking examples, thus making their whole letter questionable, and they still haven't explained where it says that WTO members must impose a minimum tariff of 14% on imported wine. Because it simply doesn't, I've checked.

The final point is the general principle of continuity of international treaties, so if the UK leaves the EU, we are then almost automatically in a UK-Bangladesh FTA and a UK-Chile FTA on the same terms and conditions as the EU-Bangladesh FTA or the EU-Chile FTA, and so on, until and unless one party abrogates it.

The Daily Mirror channels its inner Daily Mail

From The Daily Mirror:

Mum died after plunging down 50ft well 'while gardening' at £600,000 home

Irina Nadiotis, 58, is thought to have been stuck in the well of her £600,000 Grade II-listed home for up to two hours before her body was recovered.

A mum-of-two died after plunging down a 50-foot well in the garden of her Grade II-listed home. Irina Nadiotis, 58, fell down the hole while apparently gardening at her 17th century townhouse in the Cotswolds on Saturday.

It is thought that she was stuck in the well for up to two hours before her body was recovered by rescue crews, according to her neighbours. Ms Nadiotis had only recently moved into the £600,000 property, and locals said she might not have realised there was a well at her new home.

It lacks the Daily Mail's subtlety and impish humour, instead going for the sledgehammer of mentioning the value of the house three times in the headline and the next five sentences.

Must try harder.

Unreported is whether the woman was ever a drummer for Spinal Tap.

Yeah, but which government?

We had lunch at Sainsbury's today, which has free newspapers, so for balance I read The Sun and then The Daily Mirror.

The Daily Mirror editorial was fairly motherhood and apple but ended with the following classic (in print, it was bold, underlined italics):

Mr Duncan Smith should be focusing on how to raise the skills of British workers rather than chasing a few cheap headlines. What’s holding people back is a lack of jobs and investment in training – which is down to the Government’s economic policies.

They get an extra minus mark for "should" instead of saying "it would be nice if", what riles is the implication that lack of jobs and investment in training can blamed on the current lot's economic policies. Their economic policies are indeed awful, possibly marginally worse than Labour's, but even if they were perfect, there's not much they could have achieved after one year in charge.

If they'd made it clear that the lack of jobs etc. is down to the cumulative effect of successive UK governments' economic policies or education policies for the past few decades (or even centuries, I wasn't alive at the time) regardless of whether they were Tory or Labour, then fair enough, but the Mirror is supposed to be a Labour-supporting paper so this is a bit of an own goal either way.

The standard of propaganda pushed out by The Sun is just far more sophisticated, the conclusion at the end of the Sun Says comment on the same issue is as follows:

Britain needs skilled migrants and must not shut them out. But we also desperately need our young back in work. What's the answer? We must improve education - which Michael Gove is doing - so our young can compete in the world, particularly in science and technology.

And we must create more jobs. That calls for a low-tax, low-regulation economy encouraging entrepreneurs to start businesses here. Good jobs for all must be our aim.

That's far more stirring stuff. The discerning viewer will note that they say something positive about a Tory minister (probably deservedly so, Gove's heart seems to be in the right place) and the rest is Indian Bicycle Marketing.

They pander to the widely held notion that the Tories are the party of low-tax, low-regulation, when nothing could be further from the truth. And it's also pretty ironic that The Sun, the organ of dumbing down, should make a po-faced plea on behalf of "science and technology".

Yeah, but what about the borrowers' obligations..?

Just to illustrate that Home-Owner-Ism* is rife across the political spectrum, The Daily Mirror plays the "greedy mortgage lenders" card...

Struggling homebuyers are to be given extra protection from greedy mortgage lenders. City watchdogs want to stop banks slapping unfair penalty fees on those who fall behind with repayments. The Financial Services Authority also aims to do more to remove rogue advisers from the industry. It says a clampdown will lessen the misery of repossessions and cut fraud.

There are nearly 400,000 buyers with mortgage arrears, according to the FSA. Its investigation found some lenders imposing penalty fees of up to £50 a month even when borrowers had struck a deal to repay what they owe.

The FSA wants to outlaw this and stop lenders imposing interest on penalty fees and early-repayment charges. Banks will also be obliged to check if customers could benefit from any Government schemes aimed at helping buyers...

Fsa mortgages director Lesley Titcomb said: "Lenders need to be in no doubt of their obligations to customers who fall behind with payments and must realise that such circumstances are not an opportunity to create further profits."

* Disclaimer - not all homeowners are Home-Owner-Ists. That particular term of abuse is reserved for the NIMBYs; the people who prefer taxing wealth creation than taxing property values; and in this instance, those who think that as soon as your name is down at HM Land Registry who achieve an exalted status and deserve special treatment. Would anybody in their right minds demand that banks subsidise tenants who get behind on their rent?

Life copies satire

Ed Balls, in a guest post over at Ross, yesterday:

The first group of young people to have been entirely educated under Labour pick up their GCSE results today. After they have found someone to read the results out to them they will find that more young people are succeeding than ever before.

The Daily Mirror, today:

A desperate mum will today read her son his GCSE results ...

"Just 2 in 3 Brit babies are white"

Screams the headline in The Sun*, accompanied by a photo of six babies, only three of which appear to be white *sigh*.

I can't find the ONS press release, but this bit is worth repeating (assuming it is correct):

Almost all Asian babies (96 per cent) were born to married parents, compared with one third in the Caribbean group and 51 per cent in the white British category. The number of births by single mums was also highest in the Caribbean group — 20.5 per cent — followed by African (13 per cent) and white British (seven per cent).

OK, so 20.5% of black babies are born to single mums, so 79.5% are born to married parents (33.3%) or to cohabiting parents** (by subtraction 46.2%). Then there's the statistic paraded in The New Statesman: "59 per cent of black Caribbean children are looked after by a lone parent"..

That means, again by subtraction, that about half of all black parents who were married or cohabiting when a baby is born have split up (20.5% born to single mums ab initio plus half of 79.5% = 60.25%). That doesn't necessarily mean 'half will split up by the time the child has reached adulthood', it could mean that they all have split up by the time the child reaches adulthood. It could also mean five-sixths*** of those parents allegedly cohabiting were basically lying (for whatever reason) and who split up shortly after the birth. Or maybe, 46.2% genuinely are cohabiting (and remain together), but five-sixths of them fancy that extra £220 a week that the welfare system offers them if the mother claims to be a single mum. Who knows?

Just sayin', is all.

* Interestingly, The Daily Mirror runs the same story under the headline "Less than two thirds of babies are now white British" and concludes "... which is brilliant."

** i.e. the mother knew the 'father' well enough to be able to put his name on the birth certificate.

*** 5/6 x 46.2% = 38.5%, plus 20.5% born to officially single mums = 59% total.

"Tory councillor claims knives are cool"

Fellow libertarian blogger Philip Thomas gets his 15 minutes of fame!