Fun Online Polls: Motorways, tax havens and Third World Poverty

The responses to last week's (second) Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Which lane(s) do you normally use on a three-lane motorway?

Slow lane - 3%
Slow lane and middle lane for overtaking lorries - 33%
Middle lane as far as possible - 7%
Mainly middle lane and sometimes fast lane - 26%
Fast lane all the way if possible - 4%
Fast lane with tailgating and angry flashing - 13%
Other, please specify - 14%

IF, for simplicity, I assume that
- people in the second category use the slow lane two-thirds of the time and the middle lane one-third of the time;
- people in the fourth category use the middle lane two-thirds of the time and the fast lane one-third of the time; and
- people in the "other" category are in each lane one-third of the time,
THEN we end up with the following distribution

Slow lane - 30%.
Middle lane - 40%
Fast lane - 30%

Which looks close to the optimum use of motorways - more or less the same number of vehicles in each lane - assuming that lorries, people towing caravans, and pensioners in their MX5s in the slow lane need a bit more space in front and behind for braking, so there ought to be slightly fewer vehicles in the slow lane anyway.

Well done us. Do we really need regulations telling us which lane to use, or shall we just keep muddling along get the optimum usage by constant trial and error and changing lanes where necessary?
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This week's Fun Online Poll is based on the myth that we can end world hunger by shutting down tax havens.

The article on the background got a bit lengthy so I posted it here.

Vote here or use the widget in the side bar.

George W Bush makes a fool of himself (part 94)

Jonathan Pearce over at Samizdata commends GWB warmly for this parting shot:

The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter." He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

Nice try, George, but didn't you know that the USA have been overtaken by The People's Republic of China?

Y I H8 G8

Jock Coats did a fine post under this title (which is so good I had to nick it), all I can add to his post is that I am familiar with most of the 'leaders' attending (apart from Fukuda and Harper) and, at the risk of generalising, what they represent to me is Statism, Corporatism, corruption, high taxes, high subsidies, protectionism, interventionism and being in thrall to this Climate Change nonsense.

As a pragmatic libertarian, it strikes me that the best thing they could do is pretty much the opposite of whatever it is that they are doing. In other words, they ought to be scrapping trade barriers, subsidies, high taxes etc, not inventing excuses for new ones.

"G8 aims to halve greenhouse gases"

Er ... what's the point, exactly?

According to St John of Redwood's magic fag packet:

It is important to bear in mind some figures on the relative role of UK humans in greenhouse gas totals. CO2 is only 3.6% of total greenhouse gas - water vapour is by far and way the dominant one. The UK is only 2% of total human activity on the planet, and human activity only accounts for 3.4% of the CO2 emitted - the rest comes from natural sources. This means that the UK human contribution to total greenhouse gas in the world is 0.0025%.