Here we go again...

From the BBC:

A mortgage guarantee scheme to help people with small deposits get on the property ladder is set to be announced at next week's Budget. The government will offer incentives to lenders, bringing back 95% mortgages which have "virtually disappeared" during the pandemic, the Treasury says.

An extension to the Stamp Duty Land Tax "holiday" is also on the cards.
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From The Daily Mail:

Biden bombs Syria border crossing and 'kills 22' Iran-backed militia fighters in retaliation to rocket attacks that injured American troops and killed a contractor in Iraq.

The poor sods will be looking back fondly at the Trump years.
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And for a bit of light relief, a "global warming causes cooling" story from The Guardian:

Rahmstorf said: “We risk triggering [a tipping point] in this century, and the [Gulf Stream] would spin down within the next century. It is extremely unlikely that we have already triggered it, but if we do not stop global warming, it is increasingly likely that we will trigger it.”

Research in 2018 also showed a weakening of the AMOC, but the paper in Nature Geoscience says this was unprecedented over the last millennium, a clear indication that human actions are to blame. Scientists have previously said a weakening of the Gulf Stream could cause freezing winters in western Europe and unprecedented changes across the Atlantic.

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 Over the past four years, US troops have been largely (although not entirely) withdrawn from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.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

Just dig a canal across the UAE, problem solved.

According to the Americans, the Iranians are carrying out sporadic random attacks on oil tankers passing through the Straits of Hormuz. The Iranians are decrying this as a false flag operation etcetera.

As a proper arm chair internet warrior, with zero knowledge about civil engineering, local politics, shipping or the oil industry, my brilliant solution, that can't possibly not work and will definitely defuse the whole situation, is for the UAE to quickly dig a new canal so that oil tankers can bypass the Straits entirely.

They can do short route A (30 miles or so) across the top bit, or the UAE and Oman can co-operate and do longer route B (100 miles or so) from Dubai to Sohar.

I did put some thought into this - my first bright idea was build a pipeline along those routes, but it turns out it would take days to empty an oil tanker at the western end and days to fill another oil tanker at the eastern end, so I shelved that one.

The answer's obvious if you look at the map:

Fun Online Polls: Angela Merkel's ultimatum & The price of crude oil

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

How will Cameron respond to Merkel throwing down the gauntlet?

Continue to waffle on about renegotiating terms with the EU for as long as possible - 97%Hold a referendum as soon as possible - 3%

Cameron's gone awfully quite about it since, hasn't he?
'Nuff said.
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There was am excellent article in today's City AM, worth reading in full, but here's the gist:

... at last I’ve found a conspiracy theory I can get behind: the whispered secret accord between the US and Saudi Arabia over the geopolitics of energy policy seems to me to be the real deal.

One thing is for certain; the Saudis are behaving decidedly oddly. While the price of oil has fallen off the map, having dropped below $80 per barrel to its lowest level in four years (in late spring it was perched at a lofty $115), the petro-kingdom has done absolutely nothing.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll:

Is Saudi Arabia deliberately pushing down the price of crude oil?

Fun Online Polls: Intellectual Property rights & Complete Chaos

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

When a patent or copyright expires, does society as a whole...

become slightly wealthier - 71%
stay exactly the same - 26%
becomes slightly poorer - 3%

Which must be the correct answer.

Shakespeare's plays are long out of copyright, but they are still there for everybody to enjoy (or not as the case may be). Everybody can manufacture ring-pull cans without having to pay a fraction of a penny licence fee to the original inventor/designer for each one, and so on and so forth. Overall, the wealth is still there, it is just shared out slightly differently (and probably more efficiently).

Of course there is a loss to the original owner when his IP rights lapse but that is more than outweighed by the gain to 'everybody else'. Worst case, it's a break even.

Think about it, there are four variables in deciding what protection to grant:
- whether it gets protection in the first place,
- how expensive the registration procedure is,
- how long the protection should last, and
- to the extent a government taxes earned income, there is an argument for taxing such protected income before it taxes anything else.

Have we got the balance right? In some respects, no, but broadly speaking, we're not far off. Governments have to incentivise innovation without stifling competition, and this is a good way of doing it.

If the 3% who voted "slightly poorer" are correct, then that must mean that patents and copyrights should be protected for infinity, which is clearly wrong, or else we'd have it (doesn't apply to trademarks, they are protected in perpetuity).

Now, if we agree that government protection of what is ultimately earned income should only be time limited, why do we think that governments have the right to sell off the freehold of land for one initial payment, often centuries ago, and protect that source of unearned income in perpetuity?

Is there not a mismatch here?
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This week's Fun Online Poll.

Complete and utter chaos (multiple selections allowed).

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.