A new approach to diplomacy.

From the BBC:

Donald Trump's election risks upsetting EU ties with the US "fundamentally and structurally", EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has warned.

"We will need to teach the president-elect what Europe is and how it works," Mr Juncker told students in Luxembourg. The Commission chief predicted that two years would be wasted while Mr Trump "tours a world he doesn't know"…

Speaking on Friday, he said: "In general the Americans take no interest in Europe… During the campaign, Mr Trump said Belgium was a village somewhere on our continent… "

Trump and Juncker are both insufferably rude and conceited, but I'll give Juncker the points in this round for elegant sarcasm.

Juncker gets no points for originality though. I distinctly remember a Dave Lee Roth interview in the early 1980s where he claimed Sammy Hagar was dumb (it was not clear why he had a grudge against Hagar). Roth said that he had performed all over the world and learned something about each country he visited; Hagar had also performed all over the world but had learned nothing because he never had a clue where he actually was, or words to that effect. Ironically, a couple of years later, Lee Roth got kicked out of/left Van Halen and was replaced by… Sammy Hagar.

UPDATE: Mike W informs us in the comments that Dave Lee Roth was merely paraphrasing Frederick the Great:

"Thought, or, better to explain myself, the faculty of combining ideas, is what distinguishes man from beasts of burden. A mule, though he should have made ten campaigns under prince Eugene, would not have improved in his tactics.

And to the shame of humanity it must be confessed that, with respect to this kind of indolent stupidity, many old officers are not superior to such a mule."

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.

The Most Generous Prime Minister Ever!

Reader's Letter Of The Day

From The Metro:

It is good to see the government has decided to make cigarettes and under-the-counter item in shops. I'm quite confident that removing them will cut their appeal and destroy the market for them; after all, look at how effective it has been at eliminating the drugs culture in this country.

On the other hand, isn't this proposition that antithesis of the government's stance that removing books from view, by closing all the libraries, will not reduce reading?

Beyond this, I think the government is unwise to contemplate the idea of only allowing the sale of cigarettes in unmarked, unbranded boxes. Surely this would only serve to make the smuggling and selling of counterfeit cigarettes, already a major problem, even simpler.

Not only would this remove a revenue stream from HMRC, but it would also increase the funding sources for criminal and terrorist organisations.

Julian Self, Buckinghamshire.

Edward Leigh on top form

From the BBC:

The government spent £780m reorganising its departments and agencies in the four years after the 2005 election, Whitehall's spending watchdog says. The National Audit Office says more than 90 such moves happened, some of which may have been unnecessary...

Conservative MP Edward Leigh, the chairman of the Commons public accounts committee, which oversees the work of the NAO, said: "Designers of logos and makers of nameplates have had much reason to be grateful for central government's passion for constantly reorganising and renaming its departments. No one else seems to be very keen - especially the hard-pressed civil servants who have to cope with the fall-out while still trying to do their day jobs. Whether this frenzy of reorganisation and renaming gives value for money is entirely mysterious."

He only let himself down with 'hard pressed civil servant', which is a contradiction in terms.

Sarcasm ..?

Little Fat Bastard got a bit hot and bothered about this post on CiF*

shagnasty October 11, 2007 1:28 PM:
No. There should be absolutely no referendum on the EU. On this issue the British people are complete idiots and cannot be trusted to arrive at a decision that is in their interests, since they understand close to nothing about it. The bewildered herd need to be led to a brighter future by men and women who DO understand what's at stake.

I reckon that this must have been ironic/sarcastic/tongue in cheek. LFB_UK wasn't so sure.

What do you think?

* The new name for JiF. Having read the full comment by Shagnasty, I am not sure whether he is not perhaps an Islamist who maybe welcomes public hangings at football matches etc, a bit like in that Islamic paradise Iran, y'know, that country to which the oppressed Muslim minority in the UK is desperately trying to return...