Supermarket boss moans about consequences of underpaying staff.

From The Mirror:

Iceland managing director Richard Walker said: "Nationwide, the UK is currently short of at least 100,000 HGV drivers – the truckers we all rely on to keep us supplied with our food and other daily needs. This is due to a combination of factors, including our historic failure to value this essential work correctly..."

"One in five UK businesses ‘financially stressed’, says KPMG"

From Accountancy Today:

One in five UK businesses are "financially stressed", according to new research from KPMG's restructuring practice.

The practice analysed the filings of all UK businesses with revenues over £10m in the five year period to the end of 2018. Trading performance, profitability, cashflow, liquidity and debt leverage were all analysed to produce a score to identify financial stress and distress among these businesses.

What KPMG fail to mention is that their rapacious audit fees (monopoly rent) are a major contributor towards their clients' financial stress, taking one or two per cent of turnover on average.

We are considerably greener than you!

From the BBC:

The Scottish government's targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions have been strengthened, as MSPs voted to put down a "net-zero" target in law.

The Climate Change Bill - which aims to have all emissions offset by 2045 - was passed by 113 votes to 0 at Holyrood. Ministers agreed to a Labour amendment to up the interim target, with members agreeing to target a 75% reduction by 2030, compared with 1990 levels. However, a Green bid to increase this goal to 80% was heavily defeated.

Environment Secretary Roseanna Cunningham said the government was "putting in place the most stringent framework of statutory targets of any country in the world". The Greens abstained in the final vote, and said members should "not pretend this bill is anywhere near meaningful action to address the climate emergency".

If they really meant it, they could make a start by shutting down the oil wells and leave the fossil fuels in the ground.

Oh the irony...

Emailed in by Lola, a video on how Amazon is buying up vacant shopping centres, the ones that went out of business partly because of online shopping ( or 'glorified mail order' as I call it, to put it in context), and using them as warehouses/distribution centres, and presumably collection centres for people in a hurry.
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Also emailed in by Lola, from The Telegraph:

The perilous state of Sir Philip Green’s retail empire has been laid bare in a 312-page tome sent to landlords as the former “king of the high street” pleads with them to help save Arcadia from going bust.

The document reveals that Arcadia’s earnings have crashed from £215m to just £30m in the last five years – a fraction of the £100m of extra costs, including pension contributions and debt interest, it is on the hook for...

Landlords' response: “We are not minded to support Philip Green ­because he took a perfectly good business and extracted money rather than investing.”

Pots, kettles.
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From the BBC, this morning:

Meanwhile another leadership hopeful, Home Secretary Sajid Javid, has vowed to recruit 20,000 new police officers.

Writing in the Sun, Mr Javid says: "More police on the beat means less crime on our streets. Not exactly rocket science is it?"

BBC Reality Check says, under the Conservative and coalition governments, the number of police offices has fallen by somewhere between 19,000 and 22,000.

I'm not sure why the BBC even bothered to link to the source of the figures for the reduction, this is more or less common knowledge.

Nobody move or the French farmers get hurt!

From the BBC:

The head of France's main farmers' union has warned that a no-deal Brexit could have a severe impact on French agricultural exports. 

Christiane Lambert of the FNSEA union said French wine and spirits producers would be hit hardest, as their sector had a €1.3bn (£1.1bn; $1.5bn) annual surplus in trade with the UK. Dairy goods and fruit are also major French exports. A UK no-deal exit from the EU would bring new customs checks and rules.

Ms Lambert told broadcaster France Info that "the British are very fond of Camembert and Brie... Brie exported dairy products would come back to Europe and push prices down. Theapple sector would also be badly hit - France is the biggest supplier of apples to the UK - and then there are [French] vegetables and cereals."

She warned that the UK would revert to "third country" status with a no-deal Brexit, "and it could restrict imports - that's our fear".

So how is France preparing for a no-deal Brexit?

On Thursday France announced a contingency plan for a no-deal scenario, including nearly 600 extra customs inspectors to staff ports and airports. Calais - the main hub for trade with the UK - has started expanding its facilities to cope with possible delays and traffic queues.

That's called getting your retaliation in first!

Here's an idea: the EU and the UK enter into an agreement saying that there will be
a) mutual recognition of standards (seeing as UK regulations on Day One will be identical to EU standards and will only diverge slowly over time), and
b) no imposition of quotas or tariffs on trade between the EU and the UK.

Everyone's a winner! Over to you, France/EU!

"I can't be the censor. It's not for me to decide what's in good taste or bad taste."

From The Daily Mail:

Sadiq Khan has defended his approval of a giant 'baby Trump' blimp which will fly above London during a visit by the US President...

"My views are irrelevant. The issue is 'Do they have freedom to protest, freedom to assemble and should they be allowed to do so? If it's peaceful and it's safe they should.'

Piers Morgan asked the mayor if he would have endorsed a giant black baby blimp of Barack Obama in protest during his presidency, or an image depicting Mr Khan as a pig despite that being offensive to Muslims.

Mr Khan said: 'If it's peaceful and if it's safe. Look, I can't be the censor. It's not for me to decide what's in good taste or bad taste.'

Piers Morgan came up with some really good suggestions there, although he chickened out of suggesting that Obama's balloon would have been a monkey with Obama's face on it, that would have really got the crowd going. I'm all in favour of the Trump balloon, and would have been equally delighted by a pig with Khan's face.

Returning to the main issue, Khan has made it his job to censor stuff, like adverts with pictures of slim women and adverts for affordable ready cooked meals. Pity Morgan didn't confront him with those examples.

The same old tired template

A retired politican, who toed the party line and dutifully trotted out the "illegal drugs cause harm so must remain illegal" mantra while in office/in power, now comes out and admits it's all stupid and that some things - like cannabis - should simply be legalised, regulated and - presumably - taxed.

Those still in office/in power, toe the party line and come out with the usual crap:

Prime Minister Theresa May remains firmly opposed to legalisation or decriminalisation of the drug because of the harm she says it does to individual users and communities.

See also, George Schultz (Secretary of State under Reagan);
Bob Ainsworth (former Home Office minister);
Paul Whitehouse (former chief constable, Sussex);
Tom Lloyd (former chief constable, Cambridgeshire);
Francis Wilkinson (former chief constable, Gwent);
Brian Paddick, (former Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police);
and so on ad infinitum.

Give it five or ten years, and former PM Lady May will no doubt admit that the whole thing is for shit and maybe we should legalise it.

Rinse and repeat.

That leaked Brexit report. I think this is what's called "cognitive dissonance"?

From Buzzfeed:

The government's new analysis of the impact of Brexit says the UK would be worse off outside the European Union under every scenario modelled, BuzzFeed News can reveal. The assessment, which is titled “EU Exit Analysis – Cross Whitehall Briefing” and dated January 2018, looked at three of the most plausible Brexit scenarios based on existing EU arrangements.

Under a comprehensive free trade agreement with the EU, UK growth would be 5% lower over the next 15 years compared to current forecasts, according to the analysis. The "no deal" scenario, which would see the UK revert to World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, would reduce growth by 8% over that period. The softest Brexit option of continued single-market access through membership of the European Economic Area would, in the longer term, still lower growth by 2%.

Straight off, it's not the "government's" new analysis, this is something cooked up by civil servants, who have their own agenda (Project Fear/Remain).

Be that as it may, let's take the report at face value. People's responses are a whole mess of contradictions.

1. They can't forecast GDP changes even one year in advance, they don't even know what GDP actually is, it's all based on sampling and interpolation. So doing two forecasts 15 years into the future and then subtracting the difference is pretty meaningless. Even if they are right about 8% lower GDP after 15 years, that's losing half a per cent a year. Instead of GDP growing 2% a year it grows 1.5%. Who'd even notice?

2. The usual suspects are rubbing their hands with glee at this. From The Guardian:

Why are the latest leaked forecasts so damaging?

They spell out that all varieties of Brexit on offer would make Britain poorer, significantly so in the case of anything other than staying very closely linked to the EU through single market membership. While some ministers maintain they can still flout EU wishes and achieve this without full membership, it is telling that this option is not even among those presented to ministers in the “cross-Whitehall exit analysis” obtained by Buzzfeed. The economic modelling used also punctures the still popular claim among Brexiters that new trade deals overseas would more than compensate for lost EU trade.

Hang about, isn't The Guardian full of articles like this:

The idea that GDP growth is the wrong measure of a nation’s progress has become so widely accepted as to be the new common sense. Yet it is still the go-to number for lack of a credible alternative. Measuring happiness or wellbeing is fraught for numerous reasons, not least of which is that such indices make questionable assumptions about what it means to live a good life...

It is a truism that money has no value in itself, only in what it allows you to buy. Money is only a proxy for wealth, and a deeply imperfect one at that. Real wealth consists in what we are able to own or consume, not in the size of our bank balances. Real wealth therefore grows when we can have more of, or better of, the things that enable us to live well. We are truly enriched by warmer houses, better medical care, healthier food.

Sounds a bit like "... let's spend it on the NHS instead" to me. So they can piss off.

3. Labour MPs are clamouring for the report to be published. It has been published - by Buzzfeed.

4. The Conservative Party have an undeserved reputation at being better at managing the economy than Labour (they're both equally bad, and it's down to luck as much as anything). So why are Conservative MPs now in such a hurry to dismiss concerns about the economy? And why didn't they ask the civil servants to do projections for whatever post-Brexit agreements the Conservative government would prefer? That's the economically competent thing to do. Unless they still haven't come up with a plan, even 18 months later (like unilateral free trade, replace VAT with LVT, that sort of thing). And it appears that they haven't.

5. We had Project Fear for a year before the referendum, with predictions far bleaker than the latest "analysis". A lot of "Leave" voters were quite clear about this: they don't care about a percent or two of GDP growth gained or lost, they "want their country back". Be that as it may, people's main concern is that things don't get worse, things don't change too much too quickly, job security etc. Whether your income next year is 2% higher or 1.5% higher than this year doesn't matter, as long as it's not drastically lower.

6. The Home-Owner-Ists, which is most politicians and most of the electorate, Leavers and Remainers alike, can fuck right off, fuck off a bit more and then keep going. They engineered the last land price bubble/credit bubble and were happy for others to pay the price of the "financial crisis". Worse than that, they refuse to learn the most obvious of lessons and are happy for everything to be thrown at maintaining the house price/credit bubble (in London and the South East, at least, rest of the country can go hang) and don't give a shit about how long the recession drags on for.

The IFS estimate is that GDP is currently fifteen per cent smaller than it would have been in the absence of the "financial crisis". OK, that's also a projection and subject to a wide margin of error, but at least they are comparing a projection with actual reality and not two future projections. And the IFS are pretty reliable/neutral.

We could add a percent or two to GDP growth each and every year in perpetuity and more or less eliminate recessions by shifting taxes from earnings and output to land values. But that would push land prices down, which the Homeys don't think is a price worth paying.

"Dacre ‘proud of himself’ for trousering half a million in EU subsidies while branding people traitors"

The Daily Mash on top form.

The story appears to check out, see The Guardian.

Philip Hammond v Philip Hammond

From (rather surprisingly) The Telegraph:

A housebuilding business founded by Philip Hammond has been accused of sitting on an undeveloped plot of land which has been granted planning permission for four new homes.

Castlemead Limited, which was co-founded by the Chancellor in 1984, builds new homes and doctor’s surgeries. It has been reported that Castlemead Group, which is majority-owned by the company, was granted permission to build four homes in north Wales in June 2010 on the condition work on the site would begin within five years...

The revelation comes after Mr Hammond gave an interview with The Sunday Times this week, in which he hit out at house builders who are sitting on hundreds of thousands of undeveloped plots of land which have planning permission for new homes...

A spokeswoman for Mr Hammond said: “Any shares in Castlemead are held in a trust. The chancellor has no direct influence or involvement and so is unable to comment.”

"Labour tax to hammer workers on £80,000"

... wails The Telegraph, despite not knowing how much tax Labour would make them pay if they get elected, which they won't.

Funny, The Telegraph's response was much more muted when Georgon Osbrown "hammered" families with children where one parent happens to earn a rather more modest £50,000 or more a year.

Pots, kettles. They are as bad as each other.

Today's award for conflating two totally unrelated issues goes to...

From The Evening Standard:

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said: “The Government is forcing workers to pay for its reckless hard Brexit plans. It’s a disgrace that thousands of hard-working entrepreneurs in London will be hit by a tax hike.”

He's not as old as he is confused, is all I can say. Were the Lib Dems not in the coalition government which increased NIC rates for employers, employees and the self-employed by one percent from 5 April 2011?

All those moany Labour MPs appear to have forgotten that a Labour government did exactly the same thing back in 2003.

And WTF does this have to do with Brexit anyway?

NB, NICs are clearly the second worst tax after VAT so I'm not defending Hammond, I'm just judging people by their own standards.

More landbanker LOLZ

From the BBC:

The chairman of one of the UK's top housebuilders, Redrow, has rejected accusations of land hoarding by the industry and called the government's housing White Paper "disappointing".

Steve Morgan said the planning system was the biggest barrier to new houses. The suggestion that housebuilders were sitting on landbanks in order to maximise profits was "completely incorrect", he told Radio 4's Today...

The company reported that completed house sales were up 13% in the six months to December 2016 to 2,459 compared with the same period last year and pre-tax profits were up 35% to £140m...

The planning problem stemmed from difficulties in moving from outline permission - where a council says land is OK for housing - to detailed permission, when the builder can start work.

"This can take normally one year, but up to two years," Mr Morgan said. Redrow has just short of 26,000 plots in its landbank. "At one-third of them, we just can't get on site."

Jolly good, so by his own admission, Redrow have built up five years' supply. They could be building on two-thirds of them = 17,000 homes, but they'd rather drip them onto the market at 5,000 a year. That's their profit maximising level of output, end of. Can't really blame them for playing the game, but at least they could admit it.

The planning process was also inhibiting supply by dissuading smaller builders from doing more.

"It's not so bad for the big builders like us, but small companies face a wall of bureaucracy. If I was starting out today, I could not build up Redrow as I did."

What happens to smaller builders? The Chairman's Statement in Redrow's 2017 interim accounts explains all:

In February 2017 we acquired Radleigh Homes, a regional housebuilder based in Derby. Radleigh Homes completed 188 homes in the year to December 2016 and has a pipeline of over 1,300 plots with planning, and a further 1,200 plots controlled under options in its strategic land pipeline.

Radleigh Homes is an excellent fit given its geographical location and its high quality market position, similar to Redrow. This acquisition will form the basis of a new regional division for the Group: Redrow East Midlands.

In short, smaller developers are even less bothered about building anything, the game is to build up a nice big land bank and then sell out to a major for £££loads. It was a private sale so the amount paid won't be known until somebody trawls through their next set of accounts. As a rough guide, Redrow has a market capitalisation of £1.75 billion* (at today's date) and Radleigh is about one-tenth the size.

* £1.75 billion divided by land bank 25,600 plots = a staggering £68,000 per plot.

Oh the Irony

Here

"What was your most lucrative commercial venture?

Every house I ever bought, right up until 2008. For anyone of my generation who invested in something large that will double, triple or maybe quadruple its value in the next few years, that’s not going to be down to the stock exchange but your house."

"Have you ever been ripped off?

Yes, a thousand times! The harshest example is being a customer of a high-street bank with every transaction that I’ve ever made, once banks decided to turn themselves into such extraordinary money-generating businesses for their shareholders. We are all systematically and disgracefully ripped off."

"What’s been your best financial move?

Without any doubt, it was deciding to build up a large pension, which was a huge boon. It meant I’m protected to some extent for the rest of my life, though not as much as I thought I’d be. Unless the world implodes, I’m not going to starve."
A tad confused is dear old Baldrick.

Fun Online Polls: The 'price' of Single Market access & Refuelling the Admiral Kuznetsov

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

Which 'price' is worth paying to retain tariff and quota free access to the EU Single Market?

Freedom for EU workers to come to the UK to work - 15%
A market access fee of about £5 billion a year - 8%
Both - 2%
Either/or but not both - 1%
Neither. I prefer Hard Brexit - 72%
Other, please specify - 2%

Good, that's that settled then. I hope the government is on message. Exactly 100 people took part (thanks all) so no 'differences due to rounding' this week either :-)
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A strange quandary again today. From the BBC:

Spain has said it will review the permit for refuelling it gave to Russian warships expected to support a bombing campaign against rebel-held eastern Aleppo, in Syria.

The decision to allow the use of the port of Ceuta was criticised. Nato expressed concern that the ships could be used to bomb civilians...

That's more than a tad hypocritical of 'Nato' (when did it stop being called 'NATO'?) if you ask me, and it  serves the Russians right for not having seen this coming and built a nuclear powered aircraft carrier (lack of easy access to the oceans was always the Russian Navy's Achilles' Heel), but hey.

The whole concept of allowing foreign warships to use your ports has always puzzled me, there is a very strange legal status to all these things and it's always surrounded with diplomatic flummery, but AFAIAA, Spain is not in any way at war with Russia and it's entirely up to Spain whether they want to allow it or not.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll: "Would it particularly bother you if Spain allowed a Russian warship to refuel in a Spanish-controlled port?"

Vote HERE or use the widget in the side bar.

George Osborne scales new heights of hypocrisy

From the BBC:

George Osborne echoed this message in his Peston on Sunday interview on ITV, saying:

"There is no turning back. It is a one-way door to a much more uncertain world, where people's jobs and livelihoods are at risk.

"British people can't take their money out of Britain. Brexit may be for the very rich but it is not for the working people of this country who will be paying the price for many years to come."

George's Help to Buy is also for the very rich and is not for the working people of this country who will be paying the price of it for many years to come etc. So what's the difference?

"Maria Sharapova distances herself from Nike following 'sweat shop' rumours"

From the BBC:

Maria Sharipova has moved quickly to distance herself her sponsor Nike after rumours surfaced that the company's products are made in factories in Asia where child labour is common.

Ms Sharipova said she was "saddened and surprised" at the company's admission that even adult workers in those factories are paid less than $1 a day, meaning it would take them six months to earn enough to buy a pair of the overrated and overpriced shoes.

Nike said that they had been sub-contracting to sweat shops since 1996, on the advice of their accountants.

She is one of the highest paid female athletes with earnings of over $30m last year from winnings and endorsements, meaning she earns more money than every one of Nike's single sweat shop workers put together.

Lost in translation?

From the BBC:

The agreement between France and the UK that allows the UK to conduct border controls on the French side of the Channel is a bilateral treaty that is not connected to Britain's EU membership.

It is meant to stop people from travelling across the Channel without their immigration status being checked - but has led to the establishment of the so-called Jungle camp in Calais, where about 4,000 migrants are thought to be waiting to cross...

France could opt to end the border treaty any time - but the country's interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve has said to do so would be "foolhardy" and cause "a humanitarian disaster".

His colleague, economy minister Emmanuel Macron, gave a different view in his FT interview, saying of Britain's EU membership: "The day this relationship unravels, migrants will no longer be in Calais."

Say what?

To summarise: if we vote to leave, on the next day, the French will do something which they themselves describe as 'foolhardy' and which would cause 'a humanitarian disaster'?

Go for it lads, go for it.

It's a bit like Cameron's volte face:

November 2015:

The Prime Minister told an audience at the Confederation of British Industry that the EU referendum debate was not about whether exit from the bloc was possible.

“Some people seem to say that really Britain couldn’t survive, couldn’t do okay outside the European Union. I don’t think that is true. Let’s be frank, Britain is an amazing country. We’ve got the fifth biggest economy in the world. We’re a top ten manufacturer. We’ve got incredibly strong financial services. The world wants to come and do business here.

“Look at the record of inward investment. Look at the leaders beating the path to our door to come and see what’s happening with this great country’s economy. The argument isn’t whether Britain could survive outside the EU. Of course it could.”

February 2016:

The Prime Minister said he believes Britain will be "stronger, safer and better off" in a reformed EU.

He also warned of the security challenges facing the West and said it was no time for division.

"The challenges facing the West today are genuinely threatening," Mr Cameron said. "Putin’s aggression in the east, Islamist extremism to the south. In my view this is no time to divide the west."

If they were just preying on the working class, that would be fine and dandy...

Via MBK, The Times on stomach churning top form:

Runaway house prices are forcing hundreds of thousands of middle-class families into the hands of rogue landlords, a study has found.

More than 200,000 households earning more than £30,000 a year are renting homes with a “category 1” hazard, which can include rat infestations, unsafe electrics, cold and damp, according to a report by the Citizens Advice charity and the New Policy Institute think tank.

Almost 130,000 of these households earn more than £40,000, suggesting that the blight of rogue landlords is not exclusive to those at the bottom of the social ladder…

Highly unusual to see these three sources saying much the same thing on the same day.

From City AM, normally a huge supporter of the rent seekers and the practices referred to in The Guardian article below:

The government is making its case for stepping up the Sino-British relationship by announcing £30bn worth of new trade and investment deals, despite escalating concerns that the UK steel industry is crumbling at the hands of Chinese manufacturers.

The Prime Minister announced the business deals, which the government says will create more than 3,900 jobs across the UK, one day after reports that [British steelmakers are to cut over 5,000 jobs in the face of Chinese steel dumping].

From The Guardian, actually hitting the spot for once:

Osborne is all for renationalisation – so long as the nation isn’t Britain

To secure EDF as a builder, Cameron guaranteed a fixed price for electricity from Hinkley of £92.50 per megawatt hour. That is around double the going rate for electricity on the wholesale markets, a price so high that equity analysts term it “financial insanity”.

Change your supplier as often as you like, you and everyone else in Britain will be paying for that de facto subsidy in your electricity bills for decades to come. Britons will in effect be paying more for their energy so that French households can pay less. Indeed, so generous are the terms of this deal that the government of Austria is currently taking Britain to court on the grounds that it’s handing out state aid to EDF.

Yes, you read that last sentence right: the UK stands accused of dispensing state aid – to another state. How many times have you read about some age-old manufacturer and thousands of jobs going down the swanee, while ministers wrung their hands over European state aid rules? Now we know that such rules can be tested – provided the recipient is headquartered not in Port Talbot, but Paris.

And finally, from The Daily Mash:

As thousands of redundancies in Redcar are followed by hundreds more in Scunthorpe, the business secretary said he wishes there was something he could do.

Sajid Javid continued: “Tragically, the industry has been hit by a perfect storm of being in the provinces, traditionally supporting Labour and not being financial services. Add that to us not wanting to do anything that might offend our new Chinese friends, and there’s absolutely nothing we are prepared to do.

“If only these plants manufactured something useful, like insurance derivatives supported by credit default swaps, then we’d gladly go billions into debt for them. But steel? What’s that even for?”