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.

Make the punishment fit the, er...

From The Daily Mirror:

Helen May, 39, who initially got benefits due to a heart problem she had since the age of 10, failed to tell authorities that her health had improved so much between 2014 and 2017 that she was capable to work in three different places.

The woman was caught cheating the benefit's system when a co-worker at a cafe reported May had recorded 10,000 steps on a single day on her fitness watch.

Appearing at South Cumbria Magistrates Court this week, May was handed a community order and told she must wear an electronic tag for the next 10 weeks.

Paris Jackson doesn't do irony

Apparently, Paris Jacksons is upset about a TV film in which Michael Jackson was to be played by a white actor.

I don't get it.

Paris Jackson is a white actress who has been playing the role of Michael Jackson's daughter for the last 18 years, and nobody complains about that:

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".

Ooh the irony...

Boris Johnson came up with another one of his self-aggrandising initiatives a while back, namely the 24-hour Tube service.

Predictably enough, the trade unions didn't like it and decided to stick with an 18- or 19-hour service and stage a 24-hour strike instead.

Shouldn't that be an 18- or 19-hour strike?

Newsthump nails the gay cake story

From Newsthump:

Judge Johnson declared that not only were the bakers a pack of twats for denying the commission based on a person’s sexual orientation, but also that the bakery should “check out its own shop-front sometime”.

“Seriously, I’ve walked past it, and it looks camper than Dale Winton admiring a row of tents” said Johnson. “So where exactly they get the nerve to tell someone else that their gayness is inappropriate for something covered in pretty icing is absolutely beyond me.”

U- and Z-Turns Of The Day

U-Turn

From the BBC:

Telecoms giant BT is in talks with Telefonica about buying the O2 mobile network from the Spanish firm...

The irony is...

In 2002, BT spun off O2, then called BT Cellnet. In 2005 it was acquired by Spain's Telefonica for £17.7bn.

Taking irony to the next level...

[O2's] value is around half that paid by Telefonica. Deutsche Bank values O2 UK at £9bn, while UBS values it at £9.6bn.

Z-Turn

From the FT:

Germany has made a dramatic appeal to Sweden to help it out of an energy dilemma that threatens Europe’s biggest economy as it shifts away from nuclear power and fossil fuels to renewable energy.

Oops, caught with their trousers down after they overreacted to the Fukushima meltdown.

And what does the German government want 'Sweden' to do..?

Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s vice-chancellor, warned Sweden’s new prime minister Stefan Löfven last month that there would be “serious consequences” for electricity supplies and jobs if Sweden’s state-owned utility Vattenfall ditched plans to expand two coal mines in the northeast of Germany.

I'm not sure what level of irony we're on here. Waving the Greenie flag, the Germans want to go from nuclear to renewables... but first they're taking the retrograde step back to coal, and the coal which they want to use was theirs anyway before they sold it off to foreigners.

Squaring the circle, we get this...

Angela Merkel’s cabinet is due to meet next week to discuss mothballing some coal-fired power stations as a means of helping the country reach its carbon goals.

But Berlin’s lobbying of Stockholm underlines a view held by some in the German government that coal-fired generation is vital to the security of the country’s power supply.

George Harrison memorial eaten by beetles

actually spat tea across my screen when I saw this, from the Indy

A pine tree planted in Los Angeles to commemorate the late-Beatles star George Harrison has died – after being consumed by beetles.

Planted as a sapling in 2004 near the Griffith Observatory, the tree stood 10-feet high but died recently as a result of an insect infestation.

The Griffith Park and its observatory are popular tourist spots in LA, but the trees there have been plagued recently by ladybug and bark beetles, both of which can cause extensive damage.

LA councilman Tom LaBonge, who represents the area, told the LA Times that the tree would be replanted. The paper said Harrison, who had a well-developed sense of humour, "likely would have been amused by the irony".

Oooh the irony...

The paper version of the article in The Metro includes a picture of 1D fan "Jessie" burning her concert ticket* in protest at two of the band allowing themselves to be filmed smoking what appears to be a joint.

She's wearing a Rolling Stones sweatshirt.

* The ticket appears to be an e-ticket which she printed off herself, so the physical ticket is worthless, she can easily print another once she's changed her mind.

Tee hee

SS Alarmist trapped in thick ice

Was this supposed to be ironic?

From The Daily Mail:

The heir to the magnificent Blenheim Palace and its 11,500-acre estate was disinherited by his father, the 11th Duke of Marlborough, in 1994 because of his dissolute lifestyle. He spent years lurching between rehab and the courts, he spent all his money on drugs – including heroin and cocaine – and was even forced to sleep in the car parks of five-star hotels.
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Via Drewster at HPC, who picked up on the inevitable "I own land, give me money!" aspect:

After the Environment Agency forced Blenheim to rebuild a centuries-old dam – the second in a year – he lobbied Mr Cameron for a grant.

He explained: "The Environment Agency sort of went swaggering around the countryside saying, 'You need to do this and by the way you’ll be paying for it because we haven’t got any money. And, by the way, if you don’t, you’ll go to jail'. Their ethos was like, 'Once in 25 million years the lake could possibly flood, and in the worst-case scenario, the people might get their ankles wet in Bladon [a nearby village]. We want a cheque for £1.75 million.'

"Well, we’ve done it. We had to. It was a hard job to do, not only financially but there was no grant scheme available – not even the heritage division of the Lottery. In fact, I asked the Prime Minister that very question. I said, 'How are you going to help when, you know, I’m doing all this canvassing for you hopefully to get in to Witney as our MP? What are you going to do for us?’"

People at The Guardian clearly know nothing about economics

From The Guardian:

House prices in Spain fell by 11.2% in July, the biggest monthly fall since March last year. Overall prices have fallen by 31% since the financial crisis hit in 2008. Spain has an estimated 2 million unsold homes.

Prices have slumped across the board and even in the big cities they are down 11.8% and 11% on the Mediterranean coast. The biggest falls have been in the Balearics and Canary Islands where prices declined in July by 14%. The government's decision to raise VAT from 4% to 10% on house purchases as of next year is expected to depress the market still further.

Why would VAT on house sales have any effect on prices? Don't they know that in Home-Owner-Ist economics:

1. It is impossible to make landowners bear a tax; they always pass it on as higher prices or higher rents. So if VAT on housing goes up 6%, then prices should go up by 6% and not down. This is why LVT supporters are misguided fools: instead of increasing taxes on landlords they would inadvertently increase the rent bills of tenants.

2. VAT is a harmless tax on 'consumption' on feckless consumers who go round consuming stuff and thereby destroying wealth; the tax is paid in full by the consumer to help atone for his wickedness and does not affect suppliers who merely add it to their prices. Why the heck Greggs plc was complaining about a possible increase in VAT on some of its wares was never established.

Rather ironically, this CiF article is so bad that it's good

Try reading the article with an air of detachment and superiority

The reign of irony also means a lot of comedy that represents itself as edgy, from Ricky Gervais to Sacha Baren-Cohen, is now repetitively dull, reinforcing prejudices rather than challenging them. This is hardly suprising, for how can something be subversive when it is the dominant and overriding language anyway? Satire has few places to go when popular culture pumps out its own ironic defence mechanisms internally.

Camp, no longer the preserve of gays or aesthetes, now belongs to crappy talent and reality shows. No arch commentary can puncture this self-satisfied bubble.(1) Or make it better than it is.

For we are afraid, I think. The legacy of postmodernism is this apolitical vacuousness and aesthetic relativism that does not want to call anything absolutely good or bad, that is scared of taking things too seriously.

We are now so impervious to the slings and arrows of the totes amazeballs fun world that only sad sacks complain. For irony is brilliant in short bursts, thus great on Twitter and Facebook. As David Foster Wallace said, though, irony cannot go the distance. He wrote of "trendy sardonic exhaustion". Yes, I know exactly what that means. Lewis Hyde thought irony should be saved for emergencies and perhaps we are in an emergency now, but again he pointed out the problem with it: "Carried over time, it is the voice of those who come to enjoy their own cage."

What a f-ing load of pretentious self-pitying shite, if truth be told. The article is in fact "so bad it's execrable", to use her own words.

1) Yeah, but what about David Lamb's voiceovers on Come Dine With Me? Or Frankie Boyle's column in The Sun? I always have to laugh at those.

Genius does irony

From The Daily Mail:

Shouryya Ray has been hailed a genius after working out the problems set by Sir Isaac Newton.

The schoolboy, from Dresden, Germany, solved two fundamental particle dynamics theories which physicists have previously been able to calculate only by using powerful computers. His solutions mean that scientists can now calculate the flight path of a thrown ball and then predict how it will hit and bounce off a wall.

Shouryya only came across the problems during a school trip to Dresden University where professors claimed they were uncrackable. "I just asked myself, 'Why not?'," explained Shouryya. "I think it was just schoolboy naivety. I didn't believe there couldn't be a solution"

Modest Shouryya began solving complicated equations as a six year old but says he's no genius. "There are other things at school I wish I was better at - football for one." he said.

I trust that nobody will find this amusing or even ironic...

From The Daily Mail:

A woman who defied a driving ban on female motorists in Saudi Arabia has died in a car crash. Another was hurt in the crash in the only country in the world where females are banned from getting behind the wheel. A police spokesman said that one of the women was killed instantly but the other had to go to hospital to be treated for her injuries...

Bob Crow does irony

From today's CityAM:

COMMUTERS returning to work today have been hit by yet another hike in rail fares, after the average ticket price rose by 5.9 per cent with the new year, sending season tickets rocketing...

The fare increase on Transport for London services levels out at an average of 5.6 per cent, lower than was expected due to an extra £136m secured by mayor Boris Johnson from the government. The Tube, which carried a record 1.1bn passengers last year, will see its fares climb by an average of six per cent...

Transport trade union RMT’s general secretary Bob Crow called the price hikes "daylight robbery on the tracks" with "fat profits for the train companies while the public pay through the nose."

From The Guardian, three months ago:

Tube drivers in the capital will see their pay go over the £50,000-a-year mark under a four-year wage deal negotiated between London Underground and union leaders... Under the deal, staff will get a 5% pay increase this year followed by RPI inflation plus 0.5% in the subsequent three years.

Industry sources said that if RPI inflation stays reasonably high, some tube staff will receive a pay rise approaching 20% by the end of the settlement period... The RMT said the issue of a payment for working during next year's Olympic Games in London was separate to the four-year wage deal.

General secretary Bob Crow said: "We saw major movement from LU and we now take this improved offer back to our local reps. In these days of austerity we have shown … trade unionism is the best defence from attacks on jobs and living standards. I doubt you will find a better offer than this anywhere else in the public sector."

Those who live by the sword...

From The Metro:

Lawyers for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said he was the victim of a smear campaign after details of two alleged sexual offences in Sweden were leaked.

Bjorn Hurtig, Assange’s Swedish lawyer, said he would lodge a complaint and call for an inquiry into how the material emerged. He added: ‘I do not know who has given these documents to the media but the purpose can be only one thing – to make Julian look bad.’

Swedish police papers reportedly revealed one of the alleged victims said he deliberately tore a condom during sex in August, while another woman said she woke up to find Assange having unprotected sex with her.

I was present at a judgment by The Court of Public Opinion yesterday, and Mr Assange was unanimously declared 'not guilty' of these offences, which is good enough for me, but I still can't help thinking about pots and kettles.

Yup. That'll teach them.

From The Evening Standard's letters page:

... The Queen should withdraw Griffin's invite immediately and send a powerful message that all people in this country are equal.

Weyman Bennett, Joint secretary, Unite Against Fascism.

Reader's Letter Of The Day

From The Times:

Sir, I, too, was chairman of our local community health council for four years (letters, Mar 1) and an elected governor to the Gloucestershire NHS Foundation Trust when it was first granted status. I resigned after two years, frustrated by the quangos, targets and continuously changing diktats.

Last year I wrote to the trust about the lack of an adequate number of hospital beds for emergency care. I was asked to give a presentation to the trust’s board of directors. I noted in this presentation that I had had letters from: the Service Delivery Directorate, the Complaints Department, Patient and Public Involvement Department, Director of Patient Experience Department, Director of Patient Safety Department, the Chief Executive and the Chairman of the Trust. All these departments have secretaries.

Much of this work used to be done by the community health council with one paid officer assisted by a team of professional volunteers. The NHS is top-heavy with management structures and patients are suffering.

Dawn Adams, Cheltenham.

Who says size isn't everything?

From The Soaraway Sun: Harman fave for Rear of the Year