The eighteen-year cycle

Illustrated
From WalesOnline

"Woman in her 30s is airlifted to hospital after being attacked by a COW"

Spotted by TBH in The Daily Mail:

South Wales Police read [sic]: 'At around 3pm yesterday, emergency services were called to a farm in Southgate, Swansea, where a woman, reportedly in her 30s, had been struck by a cow. She was airlifted to University Hospital of Wales where she is being treated for her injuries.'

It is not known what happened to the cow, though there are some unconfirmed reports that it was shot.

That's not much of a sanction, given what happens to most cattle.

The Gower commons are traditionally grazed by local commoners' animals. It is legal in the area and considered to be an essential part of the farm economy of the Gower Peninsula area, as well as being helpful to maintain natural habitats.

That's true! We were on holiday there a few years ago. They don't seem to bother with fences and some sheep sauntered off their field and lay down in the middle of the road, luckily they moved on after a minute or two.

And now, some sensible advice they should print on the back of every tin of dog food:

Pennard Community Council warns on its website that people in the area should 'be aware' of grazing farm animals on the commons and should follow these precautions:
Keep dogs on a leash whenever near grazing animals, unless animals chase the dog, then just let go of the dog;
Keep young children under close parental control;
Do not come between cows and their calves;
Observe the presence of a bull (or bulls) and do not go between them and the cows;
Do not approach within 5m of grazing cattle;
Do not walk between closely assembled grazing animals.

The unsurprising impact of scrapping bridge tolls

From the BBC:

Journeys on the westbound carriageway on the Prince of Wales Bridge have increased by 16% in the year since the tolls were removed.

An average of more than 39,000 journeys are being made each day, up from less than 34,000 per day in 2018 when the £5.60 charge was still in place. Highways England said traffic rose by about 32% on the M48 Bridge, but exact figures were not available.

All those journeys mean more economic activity and so on. Tolls mean income for the bridge owner and and equal and opposite cost to motorists, so that is just a transfer of wealth and cancels out. Tolls also depress economic activity, so scrapping them is a clear win overall. Which is why I don't like tolls.

The bad news is, the value of that extra economic activity in south Wales and Bristol largely goes into higher land values, so the total rent collected i.e. land rent + tolls, stays the same.

This bit is interesting:

In the past two years the eastbound carriageway had seen a daily average of 3,000 more journeys than the westbound carriageway, where the tolls applied.

But after the removals of the tolls, the difference has fallen to about 1,000 journeys more eastbound per day since the tolls were removed, with an average of 40,364 trips from Wales to England in 2019.

How is this sustainable? To get from south Wales to Bristol, you have to take one of the two toll bridges, so the number of journeys each way should be the same.

One possible answer is that 1,000 people emigrate from Wales permanently each day, but that can't be right because Wales would be empty by now.

Outbreak of common sense in Wales!

Emailed in by John D, from the BBC:

Wales should slash income tax rates to the lowest in the UK, according to one of the candidates challenging Leanne Wood for the Plaid Cymru leadership.

Adam Price said the basic, higher and additional rates could be cut by 9p and business rates and council tax ditched*. New land value taxes on residential, commercial and industrial residential land would fund the changes**, he said...

The Welsh Government is getting more tax powers next April, including partial control of income tax...

In proposals published on Friday, Mr Price said "introducing a National Land Value Tax on residential, commercial and industrial land (agricultural land would be excluded) could generate £6bn at a 3% rate on current values. This would enable us to abolish business rates, council taxes and lower income tax, at the basic, higher and additional rates, by 10p," he said.***

* His proposals don't mention ditching Land Transactions Tax as well, unfortunately.

** On a political level, it is better to say the Land Value Tax would fund those public services which increase land values, which is the fair way to fund them and which in turn would enable income tax to be reduced.

*** Something has got lost in translation here. Rhys ap Gwilym's original proposal worked on the basis of total council tax, business rates and income tax (basic and higher rate) revenues in Wales at £4 bn a year, so the LVT revenues required to replace council tax and business rates, and reduce income tax by 10% would be less than £4 bn, not £6 bn.
------------------------
Sobers of course runs with the messed up numbers in the comments, knowing full well that they are messed up. He also ignores the distinction between land value and total value including buildings.

Suffice to say, on a fiscally neutral swap, more than half of people would be better off, as wages are distributed more evenly than land ownership.

Total required revenues from LVT on housing (assuming revenues from LVT on commercial = same as revenues from Business Rates) = £2.7 bn.

£2.7 bn divided by 1.34 million households/homes is average £2,000 per household/home (up from current average just under £1,000), not Sober's wild overestimate of average £4,100 per household/home. So all tenants end up better off; a single earner who owns an average value home earning £22,000 or more; or a two-earner couple which owns an average value home earning £17,000 or more each.

Wales does "joined up government"

People aged 16 and 17 could soon be able to cast a vote in Wales under plans to modernise elections

Young people under the age of 18 are from today banned from piercing their tongues, nipples or genitals in Wales.

Beyond satire.

Exhibit One:

Tony Blair has said it would be a “very dangerous experiment” if Jeremy Corbyn or a populist politician like him were to form a government.

In an interview with the BBC, the former Labour prime minister said populist politicians, whether on the left like Corbyn or on the right, were worrying and he spent a lot of time thinking about how people in the centre should respond.

Blair famously said last summer that anyone thinking of voting for Corbyn as Labour leader because it was what their heart told them to do should “get a transplant”, but his latest comment may be his harshest yet.

Exhibit Two

An unfortunate mobile phone salesman was tied up and beaten by an angry crowd in Cixi City, China, after he was mistaken for a baby snatcher.

Exhibit Three

Channel 4 comedy Raised By Wolves is being adapted for American TV by Diablo Cody, the writer of Juno...

Now The Guardian has reported that Moran and Cody have been in contact about reworking the action from Wolverhampton to the US…

The remake is being made by Berlanti Productions, whose credits include the less down-to-earth shows Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow.

Exhibit Four

Lack of unity on the EU, UK government challenges and UKIP all contributed to the Welsh Conservatives losing seats at the assembly elections, leader Andrew RT Davies has said.

But...

Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, has declared herself a “John Major”-style Conservative, after leading the party to its best election result in Scotland for almost 60 years.

I saw another good one last week but I've forgotten it.

"Locals rescue cow from isolated Llangrannog beach"

From Cambrian News Online:

LOCALS in Llangrannog pulled together to rescue a stranded cow from an unexpected beach break last night (Thursday).

Farmers Geraint and Delyth Griffiths have praised members of the community for their assistance after their 15-month-old heifer plummeted down a sleep cliff and landed on a secluded beach below. Miraculously the cow survived the fall unhurt apart from cuts and scratches, but was stranded on Traeth Bach near Llangrannog for several days.

The family carried food down to her and consulted the emergency services, RSPCA and even a helicopter company while they wracked their brains for the best way to bring the animal to safety. Weather and sea conditions finally allowed local boat owner Mickey Beechey and a team of helpers to recover the cow by sea in a rescue operation on Thursday.

A RNLI crew oversaw the operation and a pair of farm workers held her head and tail above water while she swam more than a mile to an accessible beach, while another boat steered by Gary ‘Pwyll’ Jones assisted.

A crowd gathered to greet her as she arrived at the shore near the village. Her owners were delighted and relieved to see her walk into a trailer for the final journey home, where she started to graze immediately.

Plaid Cymru

Oh could it? Oh does it?

On the road again

I'm doing a talk on LVT at a venue near Cardiff at 3.30 on Saturday afternoon:
If you'd like to attend, please send me an email (widget in the sidebar) and I will forward it to the organiser.

Well, yes, apart from all the other places...

More lunacy from the BBC, 2 April 2014:

Wales could be the first part of the UK to ban the use of electronic cigarettes in enclosed public places

Ministers say they are responding to concern that the devices - which can contain nicotine - normalise smoking and undermine the smoking ban...

Er, are they sure..?

Evening Standard, 8 August 2013:

Transport For London staff have been banned from using electronic cigarettes at work because they are too realistic. And customers may also be forbidden to “smoke” them in future, bosses at TfL say.

In an email to staff, the organisation writes: “E-cigarettes and nicotine inhalers are extremely difficult to differentiate from real cigarettes, therefore if someone uses an e-cigarette or nicotine inhaler in the workplace it might look like they are smoking a real cigarette." 

Daily Telegraph, 11 August 2013:

Rail companies have banned e-cigarettes from their trains and stations, saying people using them make other travellers feel “uneasy”.

Pinewood Studios

From the BBC

The famous film company Pinewood is to set up a new studio in Cardiff.

Pinewood Studios Wales will be based at the former Energy Centre building in Wentloog and will form part of the company's global network.

The deal was announced on Monday by First Minister Carwyn Jones and Pinewood Shepperton chief executive Ivan Dunleavy.

From the BBC (May 2013)

The rejection of a £200m expansion of Buckinghamshire's Pinewood Studios is "hard to believe" in the current economic climate, company bosses say.

The 15-year project for new studios, stages and streetscapes at the site in Iver Heath, was turned down by South Bucks District Council on Wednesday.

It ruled it was an "inappropriate" expansion into green belt land.

If you read both articles, they wanted to build 100,000 sq/m of studio in Buckinghamshire and now have 180,000 sq/m in Newport.

So Pinewood tried to expand where they were, the Homeys opposed it, so Pinewood decided to move a bit of the studio to Newport (not Cardiff) which is not so Homey.

They'll soon find they can operate cheaper out there at which point most of the rest of the studio will probably move.

I can't make up my mind whether this is hilariously funny or depressingly sad...

From The Wrexham Leader:

THERE was pandemonium at a discount shop when tempers flared over a half price sale.

Police were called to the 99p Store on Regent Street, Wrexham, when crowds of furious shoppers refused to leave after prices on sale items were put back up to 99p...

Shopper Sharon Roberts, from Rhosnesni, said: "I was in there for nearly two hours queuing to get to the till. Then the manager took the posters down from the window.

"People were absolutely furious and that's why the police were called. Tempers were flaring and people were shouting. The shop finally said people could have items on a buy one get one free."

Sucker Bets

I'm a bit of a math geek, and especially a probability geek, so this sort of story interests me:-

I was going to say that nothing is left to chance. But chance is now contemplated, considered and factored. You might be aware of Peter Edwards of Denbighshire, who proudly watched his grandson, Harry Wilson, come on to play for Wales against Belgium in the 87th minute on Tuesday night, thereby winning Edwards £125,000 on the £50 bet he placed when Harry was 18 months old. Finely romantic; old-fashioned, almost. But there are other, increasingly popular parental bets that are more calculating, principally betting on children to do well at A-levels or university.

Graham Sharpe, of William Hill, who paid out on Wilson, says it is now taking around a dozen or so bets like these every week. Ladbrokes says hundreds of parents have bet with it. Algorithms are involved. Odds, for example, on a student with three Bs at A-level getting a first in media studies at Leeds University are 5-1. Be warned, though: Sharpe will want to know some history, following the first bet he ever took, when the boy's headmaster rang up the next day and asked if could put a bet on, too.

I could understand placing a couple of quid on a grandson. Something where the bet is a bit of fun to have with your son. But £50?

Let's break it down: the population of Wales is 3m. So, 1.5m of those are boys. Of those, you'll get maybe 10 new players in a squad each year. So, over the possible playing career, say 150 people will get picked. So, the realistic odds are 10,000/1, and he got 2,500/1. It's already a bad bet, if you're doing it for money. The bookie is already taking 75% of that money. Plus, he tied up £50 for over a decade.

But it gets worse when you consider how many Englishmen who aren't good enough to play for England will fly the daffodil of convenience when it suits them so they can play international football.

"Betting on your kids degree" is even worse. If someone's got to look at your kids A-level results, that actuarial work is going to get factored into the bookie's costs, and therefore your odds.

You really can't beat the bookies. They work out the risk, then factor a margin on for costs and profit. The sports pundit Angus Loughran, aka Statto was declared bankrupt a few years ago, owing debts to a bookie. And he knew far more than most of the population about football betting.

Well, it sounds a bit more dramatic if you put it like that...

Daily Mail/This Is Money on top form again:

London property prices are racing ahead with figures today confirming that the city is skewing averages for the whole country higher - but not all areas of the capital are booming...

Houses in the capital's ten most expensive boroughs are now worth as much as the property markets of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland combined but not everyone in London is a property millionaire.

OK.

1. There are thirty-two London boroughs, so the "ten most expensive" is one-third of London.

2 If we divide the regional populations of the UK (from the ONS) by two-and-a-third to get total number of households/homes, there are 4.4 millions homes in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland combined, and 3.6 million in London.

3. Divide 3.6 million London homes by 3, gives you 1.2 million homes in the "ten most expensive boroughs".

4. That means, on the whole, homes in the "ten most expensive boroughs" are selling for 3.7 (4.4 divided by 1.2) times as much as the average home in the other three countries.

Which we knew already. In fact, I'm surprised that the differential is that low.

Slow news day

From the BBC:

The rate of unemployment in the UK dropped to 7.7% between May and July from 7.8% in the previous three months. The number of people unemployed fell 24,000 in the period to 2.487 million.

The governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has said that interest rates are unlikely to be raised before the rate falls to 7%.

Our new Homey-in-chief can whistle for it, long term rates have doubled over the twelve months (from an all-time low of 1.5% to a historically still very low 3%).

From the BBC: Wales unemployment falls by 7,000

From the BBC: Northern Ireland unemployment rate continues to fall

Three hundred fewer people claimed the dole in August, bringing the total claimant count to 62,200.

From the BBC: Scottish unemployment up by 10,000

As per usual, they don't publish a separate figure for England, let alone dedicate a whole article to it, but by adding and subtracting, it appears the number of "unemployed" in England has fallen by 26,700.

Glad to have cleared that up.

"Minister resigned following a row over his defence of a school which faced closure under his own policy."

Welsh Education Minister Leighton Andrews, that is, reports the BBC.

Of course, such behaviour - suddenly deciding to oppose government policy that previously received apparently universal support when it became "a constituency issue" isn't unknown outside Wales.

I have distinct recollections of various Ministers in the 1997 - 2010 administration somehow managing to overlook the "collective responsibility" idea and joining various "Save Our XXXXX" campaigns with increasing frequency in the run up to May 2010 and being called out as something beginning with "H" for it; but I can't recall any instance of a Minister in office being called out for opposing his/her own policy and actually acknowledging that their position has become untenable and resigning.

Welsh couples cannot raise children, says Gay Minister

Spotted by Bob E in The Guardian:

The Minister for Homosexual Affairs, Tarquin Fielding-Jones, has come under fire after claiming in a TV interview that Welsh couples "clearly" could not provide a "warm, dry and safe environment" to raise children.

The Tory MP, who voted in the Commons last week in favour of the government's plans to introduce gay marriage, made his remarks to ITV's Face To Face programme. The shadow Welsh minister, Chris Smith, attacked the comments as evidence that the "nasty party is alive and well under David Cameron".

Fielding-Jones said: "I regard marriage as an institution that has developed over many centuries, essentially for the provision of a warm, dry and safe environment for the upbringing of children, which is clearly something that you can't do if it's always raining. Which is not to say that I'm in any sense opposed to stable and committed partnerships in the principality."

Fielding-Jones said he did not believe he was a Little Englander, insisting he had "people in my life who are important to me who once worked for the BBC in Cardiff. And there was that hairdresser from Swansea... oooh... but I digress." The gay minister said he took the chance of a free vote in favour of gay marriage, which he said he believed his constituents were heartily indifferent about.

But Smith said:

"These comments reveal that the nasty party is alive and well under David Cameron. That such views exist in the heart of the Tory cabinet provides yet more evidence of how out of touch the Tories are with modern Britain, and how David Cameron's claim to have changed his party is, like so many of his promises, nothing more than empty words.

"Tarquin's comments are profoundly offensive and he should apologise to every Welshman and woman immediately."

Short List

1. The leader of the Green Party of England & Wales was born in Australia.

2. The leader of the Australian Labour Party was born in Wales.

3. They are both women.

4. The leader of the Welsh independence/nationalist party Plaid Cymru is also a woman, but sadly appears to have no link with Australia at all.

Your challenge is to decide who's on the list and then to name or define it.

David Tutt: Eastbourne will be independent in a generation

From the BBC:

Eastbourne will be independent within a generation and part of a British "neighbourhood of nations", according to the Borough Council's leader. 

David Tutt says the UK's towns and cities share a common language and cultures shaped by their relationships with each other. "England is not just a neighbour to us," writes Mr Tutt in The Eastbourne Herald. "She is our sister nation too. A slightly irritating older sister who 'borrows' our make-up and clothes and never brings them back."

With Scotland due to vote on independence in 2014, British history is at "a hinge point", he says. Mr Tutt was in Hastings on Friday for a meeting of the East Sussex Local Councillors' Association. In an article for The Eastbourne Herald newspaper, he suggests the East Sussex-Kreis Pinneberg Twin County Agreement as a model for future co-operation between Eastbourne and the rest of the United Kingdom. 

He says: "With a seat for everyone at the table there will be plenty of areas where we will be able to pool and share solutions and creativity in a strong partnership of equals, which, within a generation, I am sure, will include an independent Eastbourne. Instead of clinging to the straitjacket of the single state it's time we all began to embrace this future Britain, a neighbourhood of nations, sovereign, democratic and free."