Looks like election fraud (but isn't)

Trump and Trump supporters have claimed that election results like this indicate election fraud:

In-person votes, counted first:
Trump - 39,200
Biden - 30,600
(A solid lead for Trump on 56%).

Postal votes, counted next:
Trump - 9,800
Biden - 20,400
(A massive lead for Biden on 71%)

Add them together and you get:
Trump - 49,000 votes
Biden - 51,000 votes
(A modest overall win for Biden on 51%).

The postal votes look a bit suspicious at first sight, but the actual explanation for this is that Trump advised his voters to vote in person. In his addled mind, he thought that postal votes for him would be deliberately lost in the system somehow, which is nonsense if you think about it for half a second. If corrupt election officials are prepared to shred postal Trump votes, why wouldn't they also be prepared to shred in-person Trump votes?

Biden did the sensible thing and told his voters to vote by post if possible (because of Covid) or in person if they preferred. Thus maximising the likelihood of any potential voter actually voting for him. There must have been some potential Trump voters who couldn't vote in person and didn't get round to voting by post either. Biden hedged his bets; it was a good strategy, regardless of Covid.

I can't find a breakdown of in-person and postal votes. It looks to be about 30% postal and 70% in person. So (let's assume), because of the candidates' exhortations, only 20% of Trump voters voted by post against 40% of Biden voters. Multiple those numbers up, assuming an overall narrow 51%-49% split in this particular area, and you get the results shown above.

It is not at all unusual for the Democrat candidate to win an election - they won four out the previous eight (or six out of eight if you go by popular vote and not by electoral college votes!). It is less usual for a sitting President to be voted out after one term, but it does happen i.e. Jimmy Carter (Dem) in 1980 and George H.W. Bush (Rep) in 1992. Hillary Clinton and Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral college vote and were prepared to take it on the chin, rules are rules, so Trump is being a pathetic bad loser IMHO.
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The only conspiracy theory that I will subscribe to is that Pfizer weren't too happy with Trump's suggestion that drug prices be capped, which is why they delayed the announcement that their vaccine works until a few days after the election. Had they announced it shortly before the election, Trump would have got a real boost, seeing as it was his government which funded the research.

A similar thing happened to Julia Gillard in Australia, go figure. Rent seekers appear to have undue influence in elections; they have a lot of spare cash to spend on lobbying to make sure the rents continue to roll in. It's a Georgist thing, not a left-right thing.

Insider trading and deposit-funded corporations

Stories like this or this always leave a bad taste, however much those involved protest their innocence.

That's another advantage of deposit-funded corporations, which wouldn't have shares which can be bought and sold on the stock exchange. They'd be like building societies (or LLPs, partnerships or unit trusts), you make your deposit, you are allocated your share of profits or losses each year (or month or quarter) and you withdraw your deposit plus accumulated profits when you need the money, or you would rather deposit with a different company which you think will give you a better return.

The point about insider trading is that you buy if you expect good news, i.e. the announcement of future profits, and you sell as soon as the news becomes official or public knowledge and the price has jumped. "Buy on a rumour, sell on a fact".

With DFC's, there'd be no point cashing in if future profits are expected to be higher, you'd sit tight and hope for a share of it. OK, you would still have an advantage if you knew the rumours before everyone else because you could add to your deposit before the news become official or public knowledge. But you wouldn't get your share of those profits until they are actually made and it would leave a longer paper trail.

Similarly, if you have insider knowledge of potential bad news (like the insurance company finding a loop hole that means they don't have to pay out on a factory which burned down), you would be tempted to cash in. But the company would have to make a provision for the future losses as soon as it knows and knock a percentage off everybody's deposit. So if senior managers withdrew their deposits before they make the provision and announce the bad news, that would be straightforward false accounting and fraud and much easier to prove than 'insider trading'.

And there would be no incentive to spread false negative rumours (to give you a buying opportunity) and then refute them (to give you a sell opportunity). Or vice versa. The amount of your deposit is entirely unaffected by rumours either way, the amount you can withdraw is only affected by what has actually happened in the past.

"Up to £3.5bn furlough claims fraudulent or paid in error - HMRC"

From the BBC:

Up to £3.5bn in Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme payments may have been claimed fraudulently or paid out in error, the government has said. HM Revenue and Custom told MPs on the Public Accounts Committee it estimates that 5-10% of furlough cash has been wrongly awarded.

Latest data shows the programme has cost the government £35.4bn so far. The scheme has paid 80% of the wages of workers placed on leave since March, up to a maximum of £2,500 a month.

That's hardly surprising, as the whole thing was conceptually flawed from the very start:

1. People on furlough were allowed to go and work for another employer, so didn't really need it.

2. Many were under pressure from their employer to work unofficially and many did so, even though that was completely against the rules.

3. There were lots of arbitrary cut-off points, so people did a bit of back-dating and post-dating, accelerating or deferring bonuses to maximise what they could claim.

4. The self-employed nearly all fell through the cracks. There was an insane rule that the payments were based on the tax return submitted for 2018-19, for example.

5. A government has to make sure that everybody can at least afford the essentials*, so sure, introduce a Citizen's Income.

6. A Citizen's Income would not be enough to cover rent or mortgage payments. The excess of Furlough scheme payments over and above the Citizen's Income level (call it £80 a week per adult) mainly went to landlords and banks. In the circumstances, the burden would have been shared more fairly if the government had just given everybody who was laid off a rent and mortgage holiday, and of course a mortgage freeze for landlords whose tenants were entitled to the rent holiday.

7. For sure, there will always be fraud, but fraud rates for non-means tested benefits (Child Benefit and state pension) are barely measurable. If you claim the Citizen's Income but "don't need it" because you are still working (or have other income), that costs the government/taxpayer nothing because by claiming the CI you have to waive the tax- and NIC-free personal allowances so you pay back (in tax and NIC) as much as you get (in CI).

* Yes, it has to. Either out of common humanity; to keep the economy ticking over; and/or to stave off riots. Which justification you prefer depends on how cynical you are.

"How I bamboozled a generation of scientists"

Guest post by James Hansen.
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In the 1970s, I made up my mind that rising CO2 levels were the cause of rising temperatures. Nobody really knew whether this was cause-and-effect (and if so, which causes which); correlation (a third factor causes both); pure coincidence; or just one of those things we'll never be able to explain - maybe these warmer phases come every thousand years or so (Roman warm period, Mediæval warm period, Modern warm period...), but I decided to stake my career on it.

I didn't have much evidence - at the top of page 1, column 2, I clearly stated "The major difficulty in accepting this theory has been the absence of observed warming coincident with the historic increase. In fact, the temperature in the Northern Hemisphere decreased by about 0.5C between 1940 and 1970; a time of rapid CO2 buildup." (my children call this a 'spoiler'; my grandchildren call this a 'clue bat'), so I twisted the facts to fit my logic. I did a Diagonal Comparison, reversed cause and effect and then covered my tracks a bit by using technical jargon.

There is of course a Greenhouse Effect. Broadly speaking, all else being equal, the thicker the atmosphere, the warmer the hard surface will be. The atmosphere is like a blanket. It warms up and cools down slowly, it keeps the hard surface a bit cooler by day time and a lot warmer by night. Surely people can work this out intuitively? What the atmosphere's constituent gases are is pretty irrelevant, all that really matters is their specific heat capacity (which is not much different for nitrogen, oxygen or CO2 - see below). Ozone is a special case (that actually does have an effect). But 'Greenhouse effect' is neat shorthand, so I hijacked the term and made up my own explanation for it.

Luckily, CO2 levels and temperatures have continued rising since my 1981 essay, so everybody heralds me as a visionary genius and assumes that my logic was sound. I'm really surprised that nobody ever noticed the sleights of hand, not even those we deride as Climate Skeptics or dismiss as Science Deniers who are out to debunk it all.

Nonetheless, like any great showman at the end of his career, I now want to tell the world how I did it (not least because regular commenter Dinero posted a link to my original essay here, and our blog host saw straight through it and will blow the gaff if I don't do it first).

Start with some basic physics and maths

As any physicist knows, you can calculate the expected temperature of the visible surface of a planet by working out the average amount of solar radiation each m2 gets from the Sun (over the planet's day); deducting the amount that is reflected back to space; dividing that by the Stefan-Boltzmann Constant (5.67/10^8); taking the fourth root of the result; and that's your temperature in degrees K.

Here are the workings:



The Stefan-Boltzmann Constant is derived from observation and trial and error; you can tweak the figure for albedo a bit (nobody knows the exact values) and so of course it all stacks up and is a good match for measured temperatures.

Don't forget that we take (white) cloud cover into account when calculating how much radiation is reflected straight back to space, so the end-result of our calculations is the expected temperature of the cloud cover (to the extent that the planet has cloud cover) at that altitude (i.e. the altitude of the visible surface)...

- The altitude of the visible surface of Venus is 65 km, the mid-point of the cloud cover, which is between 50km and 80 km altitude.
- The average altitude of the visible surface of Earth is 5 km altitude. Earth's visible surface is two-thirds cloud cover, mainly in the upper half of the atmosphere - effective altitude 7.5 km - and one-third hard surface or open ocean - altitude zero - so the overall weighted average altitude of the visible surface is at an altitude of approx. 5 km.
- The average altitude of the visible surface of Mars is 1 km. Mars has very little cloud cover, but there are dust storms. On average, the visible surface is barely above the hard surface, call it 1 km for sake of argument.

Of course, simply referring to this as "the expected temperature of the visible surface, be that cloud cover or hard surface, at the average altitude of the visible surface" would have made the next logical leap too transparent, so I used the term "effective temperature" instead, a term whose meaning is not immediately obvious.

Trick 1 - the Diagonal Comparison

Having shown that I can plug numbers into equations and get the right answer, I then did a Diagonal Comparison. I compared the temperature of the visible surface (at a high altitude, now referred to as "effective temperature") with the actual measured hard surface temperature (at zero altitude) and called the difference 'The Greenhouse Effect', which I explained with the hand wave "the excess... is the greenhouse effect of gases and clouds".

It's like a green grocer telling you that potatoes are more expensive than tomatoes, because 5 lbs of potatoes costs $1.50, but 1 lb of tomatoes only costs $1. You might fall for that one, but my table below is like me telling you that potatoes are more expensive than tomatoes because 1 ton of potatoes costs $600 and 1 lb of tomatoes costs $1.



Luckily, most people just stop reading here. They put 2 and 2 together to make 507. The atmosphere of Venus is 95% CO2, so my followers talk about "the runaway Greenhouse Effect" and sound plausible. In truth, if you follows the basic maths and physics outlined below, 2 plus 2 still makes 4. There's no geometric effect, and not even a logarithmic effect (Heaven only knows why the Skeptics set off on that road).

Some more basic physics and maths

Having established the expected temperature at a certain altitude, it's not difficult to estimate the temperature of the hard surface and to get your estimate to match up to measured temperatures.

The atmosphere gets cooler the higher up you go; which is another way of saying that it gets warmer as you descend to ground level. This is the lapse rate (which we insiders call 'adiabatic lapse rate' to sound clever). The lapse rate is actually easy to work out. You just have to understand that the kinetic energy (heat) in air lower down is converted to potential energy as it rises (and vice versa); heat is 'used' to lift the air, which gives it more potential energy (and vice versa as it descends). You calculate the lapse rate as gravity ÷ specific heat capacity of the air.

How to work out the lapse rate:



[What tickles me here is that I openly admitted that water vapour and clouds reduce the lapse rate by one-third. To quote from my 1981 essay "The [moist] lapse rate is less than the [predicted] value because of latent heat release by condensation as moist air rises and cools". That part is actually true - moist air releases heat as it cools - but I explained it so briefly that most people would either not understand it or ignore it

Now that my followers have been forced to admit that the effect of CO2 must be far lower than they want it to be, they are falling back on the Positive Feedback effect of water vapour (and ignoring the inevitable clouds, which more than cancel it out).]

Finally, you estimate the expected hard surface temperature. You start with the estimated effective temperature from above; multiply the lapse rate by the altitude of the visible surface; and add them together. Stands to reason - the thicker the atmosphere (and lower the hard surface is relative to the cloud cover), the higher the temperature at the hard surface. Not even the most hardened Skeptic or Denier disagrees on this; it's common sense. The end results are very close to measured temperatures (unsurprisingly, because you can tweak all the variables a bit):



Once you know how and why the hard surface temperature arises, the 507 K on Venus doesn't seem nearly so scary, does it? That's why I had to do the Diagonal Comparison instead and pull 507 K straight out of nowhere to shock people.

Trick 2 - reversing cause and effect

Of course, using the proper chain of logic and cause and effect (as above) would have given the game away, so I reversed the logic and swapped cause and effect - I had to show that a higher hard surface temperature led to less radiation going into space (seriously, I'm surprised anybody fell for this).

To quote from my 1981 essay again, "The mean surface temperature [on Earth] is 288 K. The excess ['effective temperature' less hard surface temperature] is the greenhouse effect of gases and clouds, which cause the mean radiating level to be above the surface... the atmospheric composition of Mars, Earth and Venus lead to mean radiating levels of about 1 km, 6 km and 70 km and lapse rates of 5 K/km, 5.5 K/km and 7 K/km*"

(* the current agreed values differ slightly, but I deserve credit for being pretty close).

You note that this is where I circle back to "greenhouse... gases" out of nowhere, adding the vague phrase "the atmospheric composition", even though the entire trail of physics so far clearly shows that the only thing that matters is their specific heat capacity and hence the lapse rate.

The lapse rate on Earth is slap bang in the middle of the lapse rates on Venus or Mars, even though "the atmospheric composition" on Earth is completely different to that on Venus or Mars. So more gullible readers must have assumed that the atmospheric composition on Earth is similar to that on Venus or Mars, even though I never actually said that, did I?

Having admitted that water vapour and clouds reduce the lapse rate by one-third, the more discerning reader should have been able to work out that even if we had 95% CO2 in our atmosphere, the lapse rate would be 9.807 m/s2 ÷ 0.846 J/K/kg = 11.6 K/km, reduced by one-third for water vapour and clouds = 7.7 K/km. The visible surface would still be 255 K at 5 km altitude, so the hard surface temperature would increase to 255 K plus 5 km x 7.7 K/km = 293 K, that's an upper limit of 5 K 'global warming' resulting from CO2 concentrations going up from 400 ppm to 950,000 ppm.

Having fooled people with the "runaway Greenhouse Effect on Venus due to CO2", nobody expected to see me admit that there's nothing to worry about.

If you read my essay properly, you'll see that I started with the temperature of the hard surface and subtracted a lapse rate* to arrive at the temperature at the altitude of the visible surface, which in real life is the first thing you work out, not the last. The figures 1 km, 5 km and 70 km are our starting points for the calculations, not the end results! In the US, we call this "arse backwards", I believe you Brits call it "arse over tit".

* It's nonsense to work out a lapse rate the way I did, by dividing the altitude of the visible surface by the difference in temperature between hard surface and visible surface. You can work out the lapse rate independently (see above) and then you multiply that by the altitude, etc. On either side of The Pond, that's called a circular calculation and Excel will give you an error message.

It's like a green grocer saying, "Well, 5 lbs of potatoes cost $1.50, so the price for 1 lb must be 30c", when in fact, he decides the price per lb first; you tell him how many lbs you want to buy; and then he works out the total price in $.

Covering my tracks

I referred to the altitude of the visible surface (i.e. the cloud cover, which anybody can understand) as "mean radiating level" and/or "the flux-weighted mean altitude of the emission to space". Why use an easily understandable concept if an impenetrable one will do?

I started the section headed Greenhouse Effect as follows "The effective radiating temperature of [a planet] is determined by the need for infrared emission from the planet to balance absorbed solar radiation". I then gave the long version of the equation for working out the temperature of the cloud cover based on solar radiation coming in (easier to understand) and said it was the equation for working out the temperature of the layer which radiates to space (conceptually more difficult to understand, although the two equations are the same, you just reverse cause and effect).

Well of course the temperature of the layer that absorbs radiation is the same as the temperature of the layer than emits radiation - it's the same layer! But it distracted people from the fact that I had wasted two whole columns explaining how to work out backwards how high the cloud cover is (to the extent that a planet has a cloud cover), which is easy, you just measure it!

In practice, most of the cloud cover is most of the top half of the troposphere, on Earth as it is on Venus (the dust clouds on Mars are more at surface level). I admitted as much in page 2, column 3: "Study of Venus suggests that some clouds occur at a fixed temperature. The Venus cloud tops, which are the primary radiator to space; are at [the altitude of] 70 km, where the [actual measured temperature = the expected temperature]". .

So really, I wasted two whole columns saying that "the cloud cover is at 70 km because the cloud cover is at 70 km". But I had the good sense to squeeze in some pseudo-scientific babble in between and/or gamble on nobody reading that far.

You don't believe me?

Now I've explained how I did it, just re-read page 1, column 3 and page 2, column 1 of my 1981 essay and see if you can spot how I papered over the cracks:

http://climate-dynamics.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/hansen81a.pdf

(copy that URL into your browser, I'm too old for hyperlinks).

Please don't kick yourselves too hard, a whole generation of scientists and 'activists' fell for it as well!

With best wishes,

James Hansen

PS, if you have any questions, please write to me at:
James Hansen
c/o Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions
Earth Institute, Columbia University
475 Riverside Dr. Ste 401-O
New York, NY 10015

Lock 'em up and throw away the key...

From the BBC:

The NHS fraud squad is investigating GPs in England amid suspicions they are claiming for non-existent patients.

Doctors get an average of £150 a year for each patient on their list, but records show there were 3.6 million more patients in the system last year than there were people in England.

The discrepancy prompted NHS England to employ [Crapita] to start chasing up these so-called ghost patients.

The NHS Counter Fraud Authority is now launching its own investigation.

... in the following order

1. Whoever thought it was a good idea to pay each GP a quarter of a million quid a year in the first place. From the article:

The average GP has around 1,700 patients on their list so the payments make up a significant chunk of their income.

1,700 x £150 = £255,000, and that's just a 'significant chunk'. How much more do the buggers get?

2. Whoever thought it was a good idea to pay GP's on this basis (rather than work actually done).

3. Whoever let things slide for so long rather than crunching the numbers every year as a matter of routine.

4. Whoever thought it was a good idea to throw money at Crapita for doing something which the NHS Fraud Authority is (or should) be doing.

5. A few GPs and their chief receptionists who must have been complicit in the whole scam, pour encourager les autres.

The relentless logic of the fraudster

From Nautilus:

What Dark Matter Needs Are New Kinds of Experiments

After 30 years and no results, it’s time to support more entrepreneurial physicists.

The "hunt for dark matter" might seem to be a harmless prank when compared to "climate science", but it's still a scam, and those taking part must know it.

They had it coming

From City AM:

Big Four accountancy giant PwC has been slapped with a record £10m fine from the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) for its work auditing retailer BHS prior to its sale for £1.

The PwC partner who conducted the audit, Steve Denison, is also facing a personal fine of £500,000 from the FRC relating to his work on BHS in the year to 30 August 2014. Denison is said to have left the UK’s largest accounting firm last week after more than 30 years on the job, according to reports from Sky News.

A statement from the FRC said that PwC and Steve Denison have admitted misconduct, and accepted "substantial fines and non-financial sanctions".

From experience, auditors will pick up low level fraud sooner or later, i.e. people robbing the petty cash, forging invoices and so on, and so we can assume they deter it to some extent, even though detecting/deterring fraud is not one of the main purposes of an audit. (The actual stated purposes of an audit are so vague and lofty as to be meaningless.)

When it comes to higher level fraud, auditors are either so useless they don't notice it; or they are actually complicit in it.

BHS wasn't like Enron, it went out of business because it was badly run, not because of actual malice or dishonesty on the part of the directors, that's not fraud. But auditors turning a blind eye to a potential bankruptcy after the event, in order to bank the big fat audit fees, is IMHO an actual fraud in itself.

"When people of the same trade meet together... the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public"

In the light of that Adam Smith misquote, let's cast a wry eye on this self-preening article in City AM:

There is no need for a “Hippocratic Oath” specifically in relation to tax, as McDonnell called for, since chartered accountants already ensure that taxpayers – individuals, companies, and others – pay the right amount of tax due under the law. In this way, we help reduce the tax gap by supporting good tax compliance.

Of course, it would be naive to hope anyone would take this purely on trust. Which is why, in addition to being subject to legal requirements, chartered accountants and members of other professional accountancy bodies are also required to follow a professional code of ethics...

But what is rarely mentioned is that almost a third of registered tax advisers are not members of any professional body. This means they are not required to follow any ethical or professional standards at all. If politicians truly wish to get tough and raise standards, ensuring that the high bar set by the chartered profession is applied across the board would be a good start.

Sub-text: raise barriers to entry by "regulating" everybody who isn't a Chartered Accountant, who nobly "self-regulate".

How effective is that "self-regulation"..? From The Daily Mail:

Britain’s big four accountancy firms have been savaged by MPs who have accused them of “feasting on the carcass” of collapsed construction giant Carillion and collecting more than £70 million in the process...

Veteran Labour MP Frank Field, head of the Work and Pensions Committee, said: “The image of these companies feasting on what was soon to become a carcass will not be lost on decent citizens. The former directors of Carillion are, unlike their pensioners, suppliers and employees, alright.

“These figures show that, as ever, the Big Four are alright too. All of them did extensive – and expensive – work for Carillion. PwC managed to play all three sides – the company, pension schemes and the Government – to the tune of £21 million and are now being paid to preside over the carcass of the company as Special Managers.

“It was perhaps telling that, with their three fellow oligarchs conflicted, PwC were appointed to this lucrative position without any competition.”

According to information published by the committees, KPMG has banked £20.2 million in fees since 2008, PwC £21.1 million, Deloitte £12 million and EY £18.3 million.

So 'not very' and yet again, we are presented with evidence that they are actually thieving scum.

Fun Online Polls: Central heating; Crash for cash

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Have you turned on the central heating yet?

Yes - 46%
Not yet - 45%
We don't have central heating - 9%

Thanks to all 87 who took part. Looks like we are exactly on the cusp of than half of us having turned it on (to the extent that we have central heating).

JQ: Can't vote because there is no "no" or "other please specify". I do have central heating but "Not yet" implies that I will turn it on. I probably won't unless the winter is exceptionally cold. I didn't turn it on last year at all.

I'd count that as a "not yet" myself. But well done for making it through last winter unaided!
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Mr Yan: Next poll should be on this - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-41360891

"We don't know the exact reason Birmingham features so heavily in these surveys,"

I think a poll on what factor causes this in Birmingham, Bradford, London and Oldham would be illuminating.

The same question occurred to me when I saw the article. Full list from here.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll:

Certain parts of Birmingham, Bradford, Manchester and Oldham topped the league for Crash for Cash. Do these areas have anything else in common?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Sounds like a job for LVT-man

Vie MBK from The Telegraph:

The vast majority of houses were sold under freehold, traditionally, while flats were leasehold. The latter puts owners at a disadvantage, exposing them to the whims of the freeholder.

But now houses, as well as flats, are also being sold with leases. Homebuilding giants such as Taylor Wimpey, Bellway and Persimmon then sell on the freehold as an extra source of income.

Telegraph Money has previously highlighted the plight of Taylor Wimpey homeowners whose leases include provisions that can mean ground rents double every decade. As well as the growing cost of paying ground rent, such terms cut the value of the property.

Admittedly, you have to worry about the naivety of some people, but LVT-man will sort it out.

I've explained this before when people advance the KLN: "But what about leasehold flats? How do you apportion the LVT bill between leaseholder and freeholder? What if there is a head lease and then sub-leases and sub-sub-leases? It's all very complicated!"

No it's not.

We know what the location element of the rental value of any flat is, regardless of chain of title. Let's say median £5,000 a year or something. If the leaseholder with immediate right to occupation has to pay £500 a year in 'ground rent' (i.e. privately collected LVT), his LVT bill is reduced to £4,500 and the freeholder gets an LVT bill of £500 (if LVT rate is less than 100%, the bills are scaled down proportionately).

If there's an intermediate leaseholder, receiving £500 per flat in a block and paying £200 per flat to the superior interest, his LVT bill is £300 (or whatever percentage) per flat, and so on.

This would pretty much demolish the value of the freehold reversion and any intermediate leases, making it easier for tenants to enfranchise, transferring the liability from the freeholder to the newly enfranchised tenants.

If the builder has played clever buggers and wants more ground rent than the LVT value, he just pays tax on what he actually asks for and the tenant has a zero LVT bill.

If a freeholder wants to sell the freehold reversion as an "investment" or lets tenants enfranchise, LVT would be levied on the entire proceeds (paying several years' tax on several years' income received up front). The investor or tenant can then amortise the appropriate part of the cost* against their own future LVT bills. So the greedier the freeholder is, the lower the future LVT bills for subsequent 'investor' or newly enfranchised tenant.

In these cases, an LVT rate of 100% would be ideal because it would make the whole exercise pointless from the point of view of the cynical land speculators and piss taking freeholders.

Sorted.

* The next 'investor' or tenant is paying for two things - a) the NPV of the ground rent income until the lease expires, which would be an allowable deduction for LVT purposes, and b) the value of the freehold reversion, which would largely relate to bricks and mortar and hence be irrelevant for LVT purposes. We can work out the value of a) very easily and arrive at b) by subtraction.

"Man dies in boiler room 'explosion' in Felixstowe"

From the BBC:

A person has died in what has been described as an "explosion" on board a ship at the Port of Felixstowe. One person was killed and another taken to hospital after the apparent blast in one of the Manhattan Bridge's boiler rooms.

The Japanese ship is used as floating offices by a large number of commission based salesmen selling questionable investments to gullible pensioners. Suffolk Police said the activities were highly suspicious.

The ship's owner said telephones used by overly ambitious and aggressive salesmen had been running hot for some time and a "boiler back-fire" occurred while some particularly tasty deals were being closed at 23:05 GMT on Thursday.

"Bayswater Investments (Europe) Limited (BVI) and all within the organization wish to express their condolences to the family of the deceased, and their sympathy with Ken Williams, 69, of 23 Hyacinth Street, Norwich who has just cashed in his final salary pension in order to buy another 20,000 units in the non-existent Ashanti Gold & Minerals Fund," a spokesman said.

There will be a joint investigation between the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, local trading standards, the Financial Conduct Authority, the Serious Fraud Office and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency just as soon as they have sorted out their bureaucratic turf wars.

"Electoral fraud: Voters will have to show ID in pilot scheme"

From the BBC:

Voters will have to show proof of identity in a government pilot scheme to reduce electoral fraud.

Some councils in England, including Birmingham and Bradford, will trial the scheme at local elections in 2018. Constitution minister Chris Skidmore said the pilot would "ensure the integrity of our electoral system".

Fair enough, but actual fraudulent voting at the ballot box is negligible, it would require real nerves and you'd have to gamble on the person whose vote you are stealing not having already voted.

The real big frauds all relate to postal voting, they ought to tighten up on that and they've fixed 90% of fraudulent voting…

There will also be reforms to improve the security of the postal ballot system, such as requiring postal voters to re-apply every three years.

In other words, they are not taking this seriously at all. I suppose there are two kinds of postal voter, the disabled and people who happen to be going away at the time of the election. Seeing as ballot cards are sent out a couple of weeks before an election, couldn't we just ask those people to use their ballot cards in advance, the disabled can drop them off at their GP or something else convenient for them and those who are going to travel can vote early at the nearest town hall?

All I need now is a clever play on words using "meddle" and "medal"...

From The Evening Standard:

A crackdown on bogus war heroes who wear medals they did not receive is set to be backed by the Government.

Ministers are poised to support a private members bill to stop so-called “Walter Mitty” characters disrespecting soldiers and their families. The new bill has been put forward by Dartford MP Gareth Johnson.

A Government source said: “On the face of it, this looks a very sensible bill that will strengthen and reinforce current safeguards.” The bill would stop people wearing medals or insignia they are not entitled to when they intend on deceiving the public.

From The Daily Telegraph:


The Earl of Wessex, who famously failed to complete his Royal Marines commando course and never saw active service, nevertheless holds nine honorary military appointments in the UK and Canada.

Today he chose to wear the dress uniform of the Royal Wessex Yeomanry, a reserve armoured regiment, of which he is Royal Honorary Colonel. It enables him to wear a striking scarlet peaked cap and gold braid, while on his chest he wears the Silver Jubilee Medal, the Golden Jubilee Medal, the Diamond Jubilee Medal and the New Zealand Commemorative Medal. Beneath his medals he wore the insignia of the Order of the Garter and the Royal Victorian Order.

Killer Arguments Against LVT, Not (386)

We would no longer get fabulous headlines in The Daily Mail like this:

VAT inspector pocketed £1.2million from her buy-to-let property empire while not paying tax in scam with her husband
* Savita and Naveen Seth had buy-to-let empire but failed to declare income
* Couple were found to have owed £171,400 in capital gains and income tax
* The couple also falsely claimed £63,983 in Job Seeker's Allowance
* Naveen was jailed on Friday and Savita handed a suspended sentence

There'd be no VAT or CGT anyway, far fewer buy to let empires, those that remain would be paying most of their tax at source, and with a Citizen's Income-style welfare system, there would be practically no welfare fraud.

What a boring world that would be, eh?

It takes one to know one...

From the KPMG website:

Fraud in the UK reached more than £732m in 2015, according to new analysis by KPMG.

* Fraudsters target victims in financial distress
* Fraudsters falsify finances to entice investment, leading to losses of £176m
* Men over the age of 45 perpetrated nearly three quarters of total frauds by value in 2015

From IB Times:

Patrick McCoy, one of the top financial advisers in the UK, is among 10 people allegedly charged with tax evasion. Days after being accused, McCoy, the head of investment advice and fiduciary management at KPMG, stepped down from his role.

KPMG, which has been an adviser to the UK Treasury and some of UK's largest businesses, confirmed that one of its former partners had quit the company following an investigation by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) into his "personal tax affairs".

Listen from about 19 minutes in...

Here

Comments in the comments - should be fun.

MW adds: or read the related article here.

We own land! Give us money!

Emailed in by MBK from The Telegraph:

In the latest case involving elderly home owners urged by salesmen to take out mortgages and invest the cash, a couple are about to have their home of 15 years repossessed...

In 2006 Rita and Richard Kauffman turned to their adviser, Mint Financial Services, in the hope of boosting their income. They entered a deal where they tied up £50,000 of savings and topped up the investment by taking out a £195,000 mortgage. The money was used to buy second-hand endowment policies, a form of investment often described as "low-risk" but which has in practice delivered volatile and often poor returns.

The arrangement was supposed to work by delivering returns big enough to cover the couple's mortgage - the £195,000 debt was added to an existing £160,000 loan - plus some spare income.

So they bought the house back in 2000 when they were in their mid-fifties with a stonking great mortgage which they had only paid down to £160,000 by 2006, when they were both at or coming up to retirement age.

And then they increased their mortgage to £355,000? The investment adviser probably was quite reckless, but which bank hands out mortgages like that to people around retirement age? Answer = one that went bankrupt and had to be nationalised.

The irony is that people like this and The Telegraph in particular love blaming the financial crisis on young people and welfare claimants.

Price Rigging

See here.

So, why aren't Carney and the rest of his crew and international mates also up before the beak?

Oh, so now they notice?

From the BBC:

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) is investigating the way the Bank of England lent money to banks during the financial crisis, the Bank has said.

The Bank commissioned its own inquiry last year, then referred the matter to the SFO. Liquidity auctions enabled banks to access extra cash during the credit crunch that followed the collapse of Northern Rock...

As the financial crisis bit in 2007, the Bank launched a new type of liquidity auction - called long-term repo open market operations - whereby banks were allowed to put up a wider range of assets as collateral against the three-month loans. These assets included government bonds and mortgage-backed debt securities...


The exact focus of the SFO investigation is unknown, but BBC business editor Kamal Ahmed believes it may want to find out whether the banks exaggerated the value of such collateral to makes themselves look stronger, with or without the knowledge of Bank of England officials.

Surely we all knew this anyway?

The whole thing since 2007 has been a freebie for the banks and a blatant bank bail out at taxpayers' risk and expense. If the banks' assets had been worth what they told the Bank of England they were worth, then they wouldn't have been insolvent/illiquid and hence the bail out would not have been necessary in the first place.

The question answers itself: the Bank of England must have known that banks were overstating the value of their assets, end of discussion.

Compare and contrast, make your mind up.

From the BBC:

More than a million pensioners are still living in poverty, partly due to their failure to claim benefits, the charity Age UK has claimed...

The report found that:

* 1.6m pensioners are missing out on Pension Credit, worth £33 a week
* 2.2m pensioners are missing out on Council Tax Benefit, worth an average £728 a year
* 390,000 pensioners could have claimed Housing Benefit, worth £48 a week

Age UK said that many people do not know that they are entitled to the extra income. Others feel too proud or embarrassed to claim...

The DWP said that people can claim housing benefit and pension credit in just one free phone call on 0800 99 1234, without the need for a signed form.

Also from the BBC:

The government has been criticised for not increasing its efforts to tackle housing benefit fraud "sooner".

The National Audit Office said overpayments due to fraud and error had risen from £980m to almost £1.4bn between 2010-11 and 2013-14.

It added that the Department for Work and Pensions faced an "escalating problem", accepting that housing benefit was "difficult" to administer.