Fun Online Polls: Donald Trump and Severn Tolls

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

Did Trump collude with Russia in the 2016 Presidential election?

No - 70%
We'll never find out - 11%
Trump is clearly trying to cover up something - 12%
Yes - 5%
Other, please specify - 3%

Well that's conclusive enough. I still think there was something fishy going on, but I'm in the minority.

Thanks to everybody who took part.
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I allowed this poll to run for far too long, partly out of laziness and secondly because I haven't been inspired to start a new one. If anybody has any bright ideas on which burning issue of the day can be resolved by asking the internet, please advise.
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I just stumbled across this article of a year ago, from the BBC:

Estate agents in south Monmouthshire claim about 80% of home buyers are now coming from the Bristol area ready for the halving of the Severn bridge tolls. As a result, property prices have been rising quicker than the Wales average as Bristol commuters seek new homes, figures have suggested...

"House prices in Bristol are off the scale," said agent Charles Heaven, "People know the tolls are coming down next year and hoping to get a bargain... With the railway electrification of the south Wales mainline, the planned south Wales Metro, the proposed M4 Relief Road around Newport, coupled with the beautiful countryside of south Monmouthshire and the Wye Valley, this is desirable place to live."

Two big housing developments are planned at Chepstow's old dockyard and near its hospital while a new estate is heading for Undy, bordering the M4 motorway near Magor. Severn Tunnel Junction railway station in Rogiet, between Caldicot and Magor, has recently undergone an £8m refurbishment while a new train station at Magor has the backing of Monmouthshire council and is part of the new South Wales Metro proposal.

Nathan Reeks, owner of Nathan James Estate Agents in Caldicot and Magor, explained why south Monmouthshire is becoming attractive for commuters from Bristol.

"We recently had a couple from Bristol who bought a property in Rogiet near Severn Tunnel Junction station, they bought a four-bedroom detached house with detached garage for about £295,000, after selling their three-bedroom mid-terrace in Bristol for £390,000. So they made almost £100,000 on a bigger house and the new owner can get to his work in Patchway on the outskirts of Bristol quicker from Severn Tunnel Junction than from when he lived in Bristol.

"That's typical of our business in the last six months as since the government was announced they are reducing the bridge tolls, 80% of my buyers have come from over the Severn Bridge. The accessibility for Bristol, the Midlands, the south west, south Wales, London and Heathrow Airport is all the more desirable as south Monmouthshire offers a semi-rural location with a stunning backdrop. It's a great place to bring up children and with a new comprehensive school opening soon in Caldicot, the Monmouthshire market is very strong."

They say "location, location, location", the Georgists say "community-generated value of land", it's two ways of describing the same thing.

This all reminds me of a Winston Churchill speech when he was (fairly briefly) a land value taxer:

Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains -- and all the while the landlord sits still. Every one of those improvements is effected by the labor and cost of other people and the taxpayers. To not one of those improvements does the land monopolist, as a land monopolist, contribute, and yet by every one of them the value of his land is enhanced.

He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived...

Some years ago in London there was a toll bar on a bridge across the Thames, and all the working people who lived on the south side of the river had to pay a daily toll of one penny for going and returning from their work. The spectacle of these poor people thus mulcted of so large a proportion of their earnings offended the public conscience, and agitation was set on foot, municipal authorities were roused, and at the cost of the taxpayers, the bridge was freed and the toll removed.

All those people who used the bridge were saved sixpence a week, but within a very short time rents on the south side of the river were found to have risen about sixpence a week, or the amount of the toll which had been remitted.

The North West Passage vs Suez and Panama Canals

John Burns left a comment on my post of three years ago explaining the pricing policies of the two canals and how they would be affected if the North West Passage became ice-free.

The Northwest Passage is operating. The 69,000 ton Crystal Serenity will be the largest ship ever to navigate the Northwest Passage. Starting on 10 August 2016, the ship will sail from Vancouver to New York City with 1,700 passengers, taking 28 days for the journey. It needs pilots on board to get through.

If large container ships use the passage in summer it will knock off a substantial time from China and Japan to the UK/Europe. From Shanghai to London Thamesport it is 11,866 nautical miles. From Shanghai to Liverpool via the Northwest Passage is approx. 9,211 (using Google Earth). That 2,600 mile less is substantial. Liverpool is soon bringing on-line its container terminal extension capable of handling ships with 20,000 containers - average now is around 4,000 containers. So imported Far East goods may become cheaper*.

His source, CBC News.

We will have to keep an eye on the Suez and Panama Canals' prices; these are based on the days saved compared to any alternative route multiplied by the daily cost of having a container ship at sea. It's a rental payment like anything else.

If going via the North West Passage is a week shorter than going round the Capes of Horn/Good Hope, container ships cost $10,000 a day to run and the pilot/additional insurance is $20,000, we would expect to see their tolls fall by $50,000 per ship.

* This bit is highly unlikely. Chinese factories sell for cost-plus; container ships cost what they cost; Western retailers sell goods for what they can get; everything else goes to rent (Canal charges or higher rents for retail premises). In any event, the cost of shipping per unit is insanely low so even if it fell by half and the entire saving were passed on to consumers, this would only knock 0.05% off selling prices (or something).

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.

Presumably, somebody intended this outcome but who and why?

From The Evening Standard:

The Freight Transport Association estimates that as many as 20,000 delivery drivers have taken early retirement or moved to different jobs since the Certificate of Professional Competence became mandatory in September.

The qualification, a new European requirement, involves 35 hours of training and costs up to £300. Drivers who do not hold it risk a £1,000 fine.

James Hookham, managing director of the FTA, said: “This is the first Christmas when we have had this requirement and many drivers are saying ‘I didn’t take up truck-driving to go back to school’ and just voting with their feet.”

I don't think this is special pleading by the hauliers, the government has been piling stupid regulations on them for years, overall, their complaints are justified.

So what's the point? Who stands to gain from this? The people doing the stupid courses?

FFS

I was delighted to see a van just drive past emblazoned with FFS Limited - Freight Forwarding Solutions.

When I'm bored one day, I think I'll incorporate similar companies for "Logistics Management For Any Organisation" and "Warehousing, Transport, Freight".

"Thousands"????

From The Daily Mail:

World’s largest container ship at 396m long arrives in Britain on maiden call carrying thousands of Christmas presents

•Marco Polo, the new giant of the waves, is five times bigger than an Airbus A380 or the size of four football pitches
•Can carry more than 16,000 containers on board.

Surely there are probably "thousands" of Xmas presents in each individual container? So shouldn't that be "millions of Xmas presents"?? Or possibly even "billions of Xmas presents", if the things are small enough.

Reader's Letter Of The Day

From the FT, it's basically about agglomeration, but also about the optimal size of a currency area in the absence of big intra-area transfers:

Sir, A simple lesson in geography explains why periphery states could never compete in the euro.

Take an approximately 1,000km circle round Cologne. Such a circle will reach as far north as Dundee and Oslo, as far east as Warsaw and Dubrovnik, as far south as Naples, and as far west as Dublin; 1,080km will get you to the Spanish border. That’s what a truck or van driver could achieve in a day’s intensive driving from the Rhine valley, if the regulations allowed it.

Take a similar distance from Lisbon and you get as far as Bordeaux. You wouldn’t make it to Barcelona*. From Athens and you won’t even get as far as Belgrade**.

Now think for a moment how many people live in each of these circles, the market available for a salesperson to jump in his car from his factory in Düsseldorf or Cologne, compared with that available to an entrepreneur in Lisbon, Madrid or Athens. Hermann has a market on his doorstep of more than 350m people within a 12-hour drive. Alfonso can reach out to only 57m, if he’s lucky, unless he flies. Spiro, on the other hand...

Patrick J d’A Willis, Director, Loans Trading, Exotix, London.

* Lisbon-Barcelona is 1,006 kilometres, allegedly.

** Athens-Belgrade is only 806 kilometres, allegedly..