[Famous people] being hit by [stuff]

A double-whammy today!

From the BBC:

Pop superstar Shakira says she was the victim of a random attack by a pair of wild boars while walking in a park in Barcelona with her eight-year-old son. The Colombian singer said the animals attacked her, before seizing her bag and retreating with it into the woods...

And from The Express:

Former Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has said he was hit by a van during a desperate search for petrol on Thursday. The Brexit campaigner slated the Government's handling of the UK's ongoing petrol crisis in a furious tweet. Mr Farage raged:

"The Government tell us that the fuel crisis is easing. I went to 7 petrol stations this morning and there was no fuel at any of them. Was then hit by a van whilst stationary at a roundabout. Great start to the day!"

The long-suffering Nigel also survived a botched plane landing a while back, I'm guessing that was far worse, although it's still pretty upsetting when a twat drives into you.

And I don't know why he had to go to seven petrol stations. I picked up the MR2 from its MOT today and got petrol at my nearest petrol station, queue was 45 minutes, but all very-well mannered and I wasn't in a hurry.

Nigel Farage makes a good point.

From The Sun:

During his surprise appearance, Farage, 56, claimed close pal Trump, 74, is "bringing Israel together with Arab nations in a way that nobody ever believed was possible" as he addressed the crowd onstage.

I had noticed this. Over the past four years, US troops have been largely (although not entirely) withdrawn from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

The outcome is as you'd expect, there is noticeably less violence going on in those three countries. A few Arab countries have even started normalising relations with Israel, i.e. at least acknowledging its existence (how you can pretend that a whole country doesn't exist was always a mystery to me; but I suppose the many Arab countries who said that Israel had no right to exist were at least admitting that it did exist).

Meanwhile, Trump is engaging in silly gun boat diplomacy vis a vis Iran and forcing other countries to go along with his sanctions. Inevitably, tensions are increasing. IMHO, US warships have no more place in the Persian Gulf than Iranian warships have in the Gulf of Mexico. The Yanks got very prissy when Russian warships tried to get near Cuba, didn't they?

Few in the west will ever give Trump credit for any of this because it doesn't fit with the narrative - they'll just focus on him provoking Iran, but hey. Let's see what happens if Biden wins on Tuesday and goes back to the old Clinton-Bush-Obama way of doing things.

Oh shit, here we go again...

From the BBC:

Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage says he is close to backing a second EU referendum to end the "whinging and whining" of anti-Brexit campaigners.

Mr Farage told Channel 5's The Wright Stuff a fresh vote could "kill off" the Remain campaign for a generation. He said "the percentage that would vote to leave next time would be very much bigger than it was last time round".

Pro-EU campaigners welcomed his comment, claiming "support is growing" for another referendum.

I'm all in favour of democracy, but this was TPTB's Plan B all along.

As soon as they realised that a slim minority had voted Leave, they decided to mess up Brexit as badly as possible, really drag it out, sign up to some unacceptable terms and conditions (like massive future payments) and agree to impose massive import tariffs that would really hurt the consumer.

Then, acting all innocent, they would announce a second referendum asking people whether they would like to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire, the outcome of which would likely be "Sod it, if it's going to be that bad, let's stay in."

Suitably heartened, the EU would then swiftly impose loads of federalist measures, like what they are trying to do to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

We also have to assume that Farage's vanity trumps his political intelligence.

Fun Online Polls: Politicians, sugar & "hard" brexit.

The results to last week-and-a-half's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Which of these politicians avoids sugar?

Jeremy Corbyn - 54%
Nigel Farage - 6%
Both - 16%
Neither - 24%

A bit of an anorak question, but 16% of participants got the right answer. Well done!

Top (and only) comment:

View From The Solent: Who cares?

Answer = not many. Only 50 people took part and only 16% of those chose the right answer (and one of them was me). It was multiple choice, so if people had chosen an answer at random, 25% would have chosen the correct one :-)
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The gamble which some Brexiteers made appears to have paid off in some quarters, pint-sized former French president M. Sarkozy has said that if re-elected he would offer the UK a new treaty for a new Europe.

Clearly he could't care less about British votes, so presumably what he means is a new deal which will  favour France generally, the UK tangentially and placate some potential Le Pen voters. Former Tory leader 'Lord' Howard stretched his head out of his earth-filled coffin and "described the terms “hard” and “soft” Brexit as unnecessary and unhelpful."

In which he would be correct. So that's this week's Fun Online Poll.

"Which kind of Brexit would you like?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Atmospheric temperatures, politicians and sugar

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

Why is the earth's surface 30C warmer than it should be, and 60C warmer than the top of Mount Everest?

Greenhouse gases like H2O and CO2 - 20%
Gravity and Boyle's Law warm the lower and cool the upper atmosphere - 67%
Other, please specify - 14%

Which was of course the correct answer. I was told that more specifically I should have said Gay-Lussac's Pressure-Temperature Law:

"The pressure of a gas of fixed mass and fixed volume is directly proportional to the gas's absolute temperature."

(Though having re-read this, they seem to be saying the same thing.)

Atmospheric pressure at ground level is higher than at the highest altitudes, ergo it is warmer than it would be from sunshine alone, and at the top of the atmosphere, it is colder than the average temperature of the whole atmosphere.

Clearly heat can't come from nowhere so what the lower atmosphere gains (in terms of average number of molecules per unit volume with a correspondingly higher total kinetic energy of those molecules per unit volume, which can be measured as 'pressure' or 'temperature', same thing in this context) must be balanced out by lower numbers for density, temperature, pressure etc in the higher atmosphere .

There is an equilibrium, which depends on how thick the atmosphere is, the air at the bottom can only warm up so far before it rises and cools again; the air can only rise so far before the force of gravity pulling it down overrides its tendency to float up etc.

It's all well and good coming up with an explanation why the surface temperature is higher than it would be from sunshine alone (and yes, 'greenhouse' gases like H2O, CO2, CH4 contribute a couple of degrees but not a massive amount) but if that does not also explain why the upper reaches of the atmosphere* are colder than they would be etc, then that explanation is not coherent or plausible.

* Don't start with the thermosphere, that is high up but hot for very different reasons.
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Going back to a Fun Online Poll of a few weeks ago, 71% thought that Merkel would never realise it was wrong to let a million Muslim refugees into the country.

Interestingly, she sort of did today, although it wasn't really an apology as such, more that she regrets having lost votes over it and wishes she had prepared the ground better before she pressed ahead and did it anyway.
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On the topic of politicians, another politician-avoiding-sugar story popped up again today, I don't know why some people are so obsessed with other people's diets but hey, I try to avoid sugar where poss so he has my sympathy (although I don't make jam, don't really like the stuff).

From The Daily Mail:

* The Labour leader made the comment during a chat on Mumsnet
* Said he shunned biscuits because he was 'anti-sugar on health grounds'
* But mocked as he has a jam-making hobby, which usually involves sugar

Luckily, the internet never forgets. For contrast, there was another politician-avoids-sugar story a while back, which raised no eyebrows whatsoever.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll (without following that last link first!)

"Which of these politicians avoids sugar?"

Vote here or use the widget in the side bar.

Nigel Farage on top form

Emailed in by MBK from The Sunday Times:

What aspect of the tax system would you change?

I would scrap inheritance tax. The very rich don’t pay it, anyway. But if your mum and dad own a semi-detached house in south London and get killed in a car crash, the first thing you have to do, even before you finish grieving, is sell your house to pay the tax.

Ahem.

Paying by instalments on a house

If you plan to sell the house, you only need to find 10 per cent of the Inheritance Tax due by the six-month deadline...

If you plan to keep the house and live in it, you may prefer to pay by instalments because you only need to find 10 per cent of the Inheritance Tax each year (plus the interest), rather than having to pay all of it up front in one lump sum.

So there is no pressure to sell and it's still a lot cheaper than renting or paying a mortgage. I'd rather pay up to 4% in IHT each year for ten years than pay a mortgage for 25 years or pay rent for ever.

Nigel Farage on top form

From the BBC:

Nigel Farage says he is "really rather bored" with the media's "obsession" that depicts UKIP as a racist party.

Shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna told the Independent on Sunday that a "virus of racism" runs through UKIP. But Mr Farage described the claim as "complete and utter rubbish".

Farage then sort of proves Umunna's point by quoting Hitler*:

He said the Labour votes in the north of England were "incredibly soft", like a "rotten window frame" that if UKIP pushed, would collapse.

* The original quote was of course “You have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.”

Nigel Farage is running out of things to blame on immigration.

From The Daily Telegraph:

Britons are so ill at ease with levels of immigration in their towns that their children do not play football with their neighbours in the streets, Nigel Farage has said.

Had he said that there are some small parts of the country where women get hassled for wearing western clothing, fair play, that is true, but this is just being silly.

Via The Boiling Frog.

Budget fun

The most stomach churning part of yesterday's Budget speech was the Indian Bicycle Marketing at the beginning, suggesting that Labour was the party of high spending and deficits.

The official version reports it thusly:

We’ll also redeem the last remaining undated British Government bonds in circulation. We’ll have paid off the debts incurred in the South Sea Bubble, the First World War, the debt issued by Henry Pelham, George Goschen and William Gladstone.

Osborne actually added a reckless ad lib at this stage, from The Telegraph's live reporting:

"We will pay off debts occurred in the South Sea Bubble, the Second World War, those incurred by Pelham, Gladstone. Those raised by Gordon Brown will take a little longer to pay off."

Which, as Matthew Holehouse points out, is bold, given this government has racked up more [National Debt] than Gordon.

This paints Labour into a nice corner; they can't pillory the Tories for overspending because that's supposed to be their policy.

Those who have absolutely no policies on such lofty matters are free of the constraints of IBM and can get a bit closer to the truth:

"Ukip leader Nigel Farage branded Mr Osborne's statement the "long-grass economic plan", saying: "This Government has evidently failed in its promise to the British people to eradicate the deficit and whilst it took Labour 13 years to double the debt this Government has done it in five."

There are different ways of looking at this, handy charts and tables at Economics Help.
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The only bit of good news in the Budget was that Osborne has cranked up the Bank Asset Tax a bit, even though he's doing it wrong:

“This is a three-fold increase in the bank levy in just four years and once again is anti-competitive for our own UK banks. It will hit UK headquartered banks hardest as it’s a tax on their entire global balance sheets, whereas foreign banks in the UK are only taxed on their UK liabilities,” said EY’s Anna Anthony.

“The constant tinkering with the tax regime for banks in the UK is unhelpful, and in the long-term unsustainable – the industry will definitely be looking for a commitment to a more certain tax environment in the future.”

The Bank Asset Tax is a splendid tax and does not make banks 'uncompetitive' as banks are the very essence of a cartel; but ideally it would only be applied to domestic bank assets or liabilities. Then every country can choose its own rate independently.

"Nigel Farage trapped in Ukip's Rotherham office for two hours"

From The Express:

Police advised the leader of the anti-Europe party to remain in the office after threats from the office manager. He was forced to stay late and help volunteers stuff and label a thousand envelopes for a mail shot before being led to safety by officers.

Mr Farage had been due to saunter in, cut the ribbon on the office of Ukip's general election candidate Jane Collins and then swan off to his next photo opportunity. But the office manager said that Mr Farage was not welcome in the town unless he was prepared to muck in with the administrative work.

A party spokesman branded the manager "hard-line Stalinist". Mr Farage added that he was the victims of office bullying. Insiders confirm that they later overheard Farage speaking on the phone, saying "No, darling, this time I really am trapped in the office. Literally. They've locked the bloody doors."

Nope.

Ralph Musgrave  left a new comment on "Nigel Farage fails to get a round in because of immigrants":

Farage has a point in a very indirect way, as follows.

If a country has the optimum supply of infrastructure, and it knows that large numbers of immigrants will arrive in the near future, then EXISTING residents of the country have to pay for more infrastructure in preparation for the new arrivals: else the country will have inadequate infrastructure when the new people arrive.

Then on arrival, the new residents do not have to make any special payment re their share of infrastructure costs. And at a guess that will be several tens of thousands per head. (London spends £2,700 per head per year in infrastructure, never mind the ACCUMULATION of infrastructure capital or assets over the decades).

Nope.

1. Farage was talking specifically about roads (the M4). The total amount spent each year on roads and road building is in the order of £10 billion. The total amount of tax paid by motorists (fuel duty and VAT on fuel; VAT on cars and repairs; Vehicle Excise Duty etc etc) each year is in the order of £40 billion - £50 billion a year.

So all those mythical immigrants clogging up the M4 are - like all motorists - paying for the cost three or four times over.

2. Public transport in London is a slightly different issue; only about half the cost is covered by ticket sales (immigrants pay their fair share of this). The rest of the cost is indeed subsidised. But those who are not paying their fair share are landowners, especially those with rental income. The rental value of a home in London is to a large extent a function of transport spending. Shut down public transport in London and "the city" would cease to exist, it would just be a collection of villages.

Immigrants - like everybody else - have to live somewhere. Those who moved here recently will be largely renting, ergo they are paying in full for the value of public transport, which is far in excess of the cash cost (or else it would not be worth doing). Those who moved here a while ago might be landowners, but so what? They will have paid their share of other taxes.

3. On the level of an individual with a limited lifespan, it sort of makes sense to distinguish between large, one-off acquisitions ("capital") and current spending. But "the government" is to all intents and purposes is immortal, the grey area between "capital" and "current" expenditure is so large that you might as well treat it all as current. To do otherwise is double-counting.

4. "Build it and they will come". Roads are clogged up even in areas where there are very few immigrants. That's just human nature. Build more roads and people drive more. Or more people drive. Commute times have not significantly changed over the centuries; if you can speed up traffic, people just travel longer distances.

Making Plans for Nigel

From The Independent

The Ukip leader Nigel Farage has blamed the fact that he missed a paid-for party event in Wales on immigrants.

In an appearance on BBC’s Sunday Politics Wales, Mr Farage was accused of a lack of professionalism after he failed to make it to a “Meet Nigel Farage” evening in Port Talbot for which about 100 people paid £25 each.

But the party leader said that traffic on the M4 was to blame for his lateness – and put that down to “the population going through the roof”.

He said: “It took me six hours and 15 minutes to get here - it should have taken three-and-a-half to four.

Bloody immigrants. Coming over here, not having the decency to point Nigel at the warning on Google Maps that "These directions are for planning purposes only. You may find that construction projects, traffic, weather, or other events may cause conditions to differ from the map results, and you should plan your route accordingly. You must obey all signs or notices regarding your route."

It's been like that since I can remember (about 20 years). If I had to get to Port Talbot on a Friday night out of London I'd either leave before 3pm to avoid the rush or get a train.

"Nigel Farage: I can't be a one-man band"

From The Evening Standard:

Nigel Farage admitted today that he will haemorrhage votes at the General Election next year unless he can transform himself into more than a “one-man band”.

He claimed that he was now more than a protest party and had built up a base of core supporters, and that he aimed to hold the balance of power after the 2015 poll.

But even if he wins the European poll, Mr Farage accepted: "I don’t think people will vote for me in a General Election in numbers if they think I'm a one-man band.

"I intend to change that over the summer once I have agreed a plan of action with myself."

“Clear your desk!” Farage tells Alex Salmond after Euro election triumph

From The Daily Mail:

Nigel Farage is preparing to replace Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond with his UKIP MEP David Coburn following his historic fourth place in European elections.

The UKIP leader has asked the SNP leader to “clear his desk” to make way for his victorious candidate, to the horror of the established Better Together allies.

Mr Farage was yesterday basking in the glory of winning one-third as many votes north of the Border as Alex Salmond’s SNP, which retained both of its MEPs on a largely unchanged share of the overall vote.

David Coburn, UKIP’s victorious candidate in Scotland, yesterday called for the First Minister’s resignation, as Labour accused the SNP of foolishly delivering a boost for Mr Farage. In a stinging attack, Labour's Scottish leader Johann Lamont said: 'Scotland now has three nationalist MEPs.'

After winning more than one-tenth of the votes cast on a one-third turnout, Mr Farage is now planning repeat visits Scotland in the run-up to September’s referendum as he feels there are plenty of pubs in the country which have not yet served as backdrop for a photo opportunity.

He told the Mail: “With the appointment of David Coburn as First Minister [in Scotland], we will have not just put a fox into Westminster’s henhouse, we have put a pine marten onto the Holyrood throne.

"Apart from Labour and the Conservatives, we are the only truly national political party, and apart from the SNP – who have never campaigned outside Scotland, for obvious reasons - and the aforementioned Labour and Conservative parties, we obtained the largest vote share in Scotland in these elections, which proves that there is a voice for those who believe in an independent Scotland as part of the UK.

“Alex Salmond now finally has to deal honestly and openly with handing over the keys to his office and explaining to our man how to use the photocopier, how to get his expense claims authorised and all that day-to-day bureaucratic crap.

“They know it, we know it, and now we can see the Scottish people know it as well.”

Mr Salmond was rather bemused by these events, pointing out that "...the Lib Dems lost an MEP and UKIP gained an MEP. Both these parties are campaigning against Scottish independence so what difference does it make to anything?"

"Nigel Farage 'can hardly wait' to debate EU with Nick Clegg"

From the BBC:

UKIP leader Nigel Farage has accepted a challenge from Nick Clegg to have a public debate on the merits of the UK's membership of the EU.

"I can hardly wait," he told LBC radio, saying the deputy prime minister was "all over the place" on the issue.

In

The Lib Dem leader threw down the gauntlet to Mr Farage on Thursday, saying he was the right person to debate the issue of Europe with the UKIP leader.

At the debate itself, Nick Clegg will open by stating that half of UK exports go to other EU member states and then drawing the unsubstantiated conclusion that "three million UK jobs depend on EU membership".

Out

Nigel Farage might mention that other member states have every interest in keeping free trade with the UK because following Clegg's logic, about four million jobs in other EU countries depend on exporting to the UK, but the likelihood is that he will respond with the entirely irrelevant fact that Norway and Switzerland export more to the EU per capita than the UK, entirely glossing over the fact that small countries always export (and import) more per capita than large ones.

In

Nick Clegg will then completely change the topic and say that the EU has guaranteed peace and freedom in Europe for sixty years. Instead of the UKIP leader pointing out that this would have happened anyway, the Western world being largely peaceful, the UKIP leader will go off on a tangent and say that we should be thanking NATO, an organisation which most people have forgotten still exists.

The Deputy Prime Minister is widely expected to extol other supposed benefits of EU membership, such as free movement of people, goods and services.

Out

Mr Farage is again expected to miss the obvious point - that these could be negotiated anyway on a bilateral basis on terms to suit ourselves - and will instead trot out some populist, borderline xenophobic nonsense about "millions of immigrants from Roumania and Bulgaria" and point out that most voters thought that free movement of people and capital was a disadvantage of EU membership, not an advantage.

Having thus gained the upper hand with the last few people still paying attention, Mr Farage will then throw it all away by putting in a special plea for the UK financial sector and saying that EU capital and supervisory rules would "throttle Britain's banks", something which most sane people would be fully in favour of.

Shake it

Similarly, Mr Clegg will lose what little sympathy he has managed to elicit for the integrationist cause by pointing out how many people from Middle England now own a holiday home in France or Italy and then going completely off piste by claiming that the EU is combatting global warming.

The debate is likely to continue in this fruitless tit-for-tat vein for until the last viewer or listener has switched over to another channel.

All about

Neither politician is expected to mention the amount of money which the other has claimed in salary and expenses from the EU because neither wishes to remind voters about how well they have done for themselves out of politics.

Pundits expect that no more than half a dozen people will change their view on the EU one way or another and the majority will decide that the whole thing is a complete wank fest, although Farage hopes to strike a chord by closing his arguments with the completely baseless claim that "Britain is a small, overcrowded island".

Reader's Letter Of The Day

From The Evening Standard:

"America may have to produce less proof than Britain to bring a case." argues Sarah Sands about extradited Kent businessman Christopher Tappin, but "the alleged evidence against him is extremely serious and process of appeal very thorough".

The reason we should be "indignant" about this case is that under the 2003 Extradition Act anyone in the UK can be arrested on the effective say-so o a US prosecutor who does not have to present any evidence concerning the crimes alleged, merely a charge sheet or an indictment. If the paperwork is in order, the district judge has to go through a box tick exercise to secure an order for extradition.

Second, although the US Bill of Rights has admirable fair trial rights, the plea bargaining has utterly subverted these. In 98 per cent of cases, indictments are top-loaded with crimes that carry long sentences so defendants have little practical choice but to plead guilty to some lesser offence: neither a free nor a fair choice.

Third, US prisons are a byword for violence. Alleged fraudster Allen Stanford was beaten in prison so badly that his trial has only just started because of the effects on his health. Christopher Tappin is now part of that world.

Nigel Farage, leader, UKIP.

Question Time: The cancelled forest sell off

I haven't watched QT for years - the duplicity and complicity of politicians I can live with, but the sheer stupidity of the general public asking the questions I can't - but today I made an exception because Nigel Farage was on.

I must say, it was only the skinny blonde lady with glasses from the audience who nailed this question: she reckoned that the Lib-Cons never seriously planned to sell off the few remaining government-owned forests and that it was a 'red herring'.

The phrase I would have used is 'smokescreen'. Seeing as there is no particular commercial rationale for doing so (maybe it would have generated a profit of a few million, maybe it would have been a net cost, who knows), I would assume that they floated the idea a few weeks ago in order to distract our attention from more pressing matters of e.g. the bank bonus season.

Let's put it in perspective:

Value of forests which might have been sold off £300 million (for which the government would have received £300 million, so net cost to economy £nil, and that is a one-off cost of £nil)

Bankers' bonuses declared in past few weeks: £6,000 million (from which HM Revenue & Customs rake off about 50%, so net cost to economy £3,000 million, and that is an annually recurring cost of £3,000 million).

Just because it's in The Daily Mail doesn't necessarily mean it's not true...

Call me gullible, but this story very much has a ring of truth about it:

Brussels has fined Britain more than £150million for failing to display the EU flag on a string of projects part-funded by Europe. Several schemes were also penalised for failing to use the flag on their letterheads.

The fines relate to £3.8billion given to the UK by the European Regional Development Fund over a seven-year period. The fund has contributed to dozens of projects including the Eden Project, in Cornwall, the Millennium Bridge, in Gateshead, and the redevelopment of Liverpool’s King’s Dock.

Funding from the ERDF usually has to be matched pound for pound by Government cash. Britain is a net contributor to the EU budget and critics have long complained that ERDF funding is essentially recycled taxpayers’ money. This year the UK will contribute £6.4billion more to Brussels than it receives back.

UK Independence Party MEP Nigel Farage called the fines an ‘outrage’. He said: ‘The ERDF is using British taxpayers’ money to tell us what a great job the EU is doing. It is a rotten deal for Britain – and in return we have to plaster the country in horrible blue flags.’

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles condemned the ‘over-bureaucratic rules’ surrounding ERDF money.He said he would be pressing the European Commission to cut back on ‘needless bureaucracy’.

The ERDF lays down strict rules on the display of the EU flag. Any project accepting cash has to display the flag on a permanent plaque in a prominent position.

Via Independence Home.

Buckingham Fun

Via Trixy, more heartening news for the real anti-sleaze candidate in Buckingham.

Friday night gear change

Total Politics persuaded various politicos and media people to mime to 'Making your mind up' by Buck's Fizz, up a semi-tone at 56 seconds and another semi-tone at 1 minute 24: