Copper makes good point: shock

On Channel 4 News last night there was a head-to-head between Paul McKeever, chairman of the policemen's 'trade union' and some smart alec from Policy Exchange.

Mr K made the point that the police budget was the last place the government should be looking to make cuts. He pointed out, see also report in The Telegraph, that our budget for foreign aid is set to rise to about £12 billion a year, all of which is wasted and no business of the government anyway, and the police budget is set to be cut to about £12 billion a year (see page 2 of this), so whatever niggles we might have with policing - and we have many - it is incredibly good value for money and one of the core and irreducible functions of the state. Our net contributions to the EU are also something in the order of £12 billion a year as it happens.

Policy wonk chatted merrily about the Winsor Report, whatever that is, and his best shot was to point out that £1 in £7 of the police budget was spent on police pensions.

So what?

If you have a budget of £12 billion, and three-quarters is spent on wages, you can either pay it all out as current salaries without a service pension, or you can pay lower current salaries to serving police officers but promise (and pay) them a pension as well, as a kind of deferred pay. While police pensions, at about 50% of average salary after thirty years service, seem incredibly generous, that is balanced out by the fact that starting salaries are pretty low.

Quite what people's time preferences are, we do not know, but it is likely that it is as broad as long - if the police pensions were stopped for new recruits, then as like as not, they'd demand higher current salaries instead, so it would all even out.

"Viewpoint: Is it time to get rid of traffic lights?"

Martin Cassini was on Radio 4's Four Thoughts just now, explaining how damaging traffic lights are, due to be repeated this Saturday at 10.15 pm.

The BBC's normal website provide a full summary here, it's all good stuff. He's got nearly a thousand comments so far, seems like a fair mixture of pro- and anti-.

Currently running equal last in this week's Fun Online Poll

She's a funny one is Valérie Trierweiler, because her face is actually quite lopsided. On the right she looks like a slightly wonky copy of Ingrid Bergman and on the left she looks much more glamorous, so to be fair, here's a snap from straight ahead:


Here's the comparison:

How long is HMS Ocean in Greenwich?

Answer: About 203.4 metres (667 feet), the same as it is anywhere else.

"Obama's NOT the first black President"

From The Daily Mail:

It would seem that Newsweek’s latest cover showing President Obama wearing a baseball cap sideways and gold chains declaring him ‘The First Black President’ is not merely attention-grabbing but historically inaccurate too.

Critics and history buffs, quick to scorn the sensationalist cover, have pointed out that James Buchanan was likely the first black President more than a century ago. Rumours about Buchanan’s racial origin have circulated with historians determining that the fifteenth leader of the U.S was an Afro-American – and that the nation knew it.

"There can be no doubt that James Buchanan was black, before, during and after his four years in the White House. Moreover, the nation knew it, too." historian Jim Loewen wrote on History News Network in response to the news magazine’s daring cover.

Loewen points to a letter that Buchanan wrote to Mrs Roosevelt on May 13, 1844. In the missive Buchanan describes his loneliness after the local spicy chicken restaurant closed down.

Buchanan wrote: "I am now 'solitary and alone,' having no companions with whom to play dominoes and listen to 16-bar blues played on the unaccompanied and slightly-out-of-tune piano. I have gone a-visiting several other establishments, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for a brother to be alone; and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old honky who can nurse me when I am sick; provide nourishing but extremely bland dinners for me when I am well; and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection for her scrawny white ass."

Buchanan, who was in the White House from 1857 to 1861, was the only president who started life as a cotton picker.

Community generated land values

From City AM 14 May 2012:

Just six per cent thought Hollande would boost stability in the single currency bloc while 18 per cent said his election would have no effect.

But Hollande’s eye-catching pledge to tax those earning over €1m at 75 per cent could be good news for London’s prime property market, our panellists said. Sixty-eight per cent said they thought French millionaires would likely move to London to avoid the tax, against 29 per cent who thought such an exodus was unlikely.

From City AM 16 May 2012:

Land Securities, the biggest listed British property developer, said demand for office space in London was lower than expected due to the worsening turmoil in the Eurozone.

The joint developer of the Walkie Talkie skyscraper in the City of London financial district said on Wednesday firms were delaying moves due to economic uncertainty.

Can anybody seriously say that the extra profits on residential are in any way earned, or indeed that the fall in profits on commercial is in any way 'earned', or are these changes down to impact of 'the community' in its widest sense?

Roberto Mancini. Or possibly "Manciti"

"My wife... is the subject of a witch hunt"

... claims Mr Brooks.

It's not difficult to see why they'd pick on her, though:

Currently trailing last in this weeks' Fun Online Poll

The foxiest of silvers and the silveriest of foxes, Mme Lagarde:

"Running around the edge of the field with the goalposts under your arm"

Parting shots by born again idiot Richard Dean, in response to a proposal at Lib Dem Voice to replace Council Tax with a fiscally neutral system of Domestic Rates like in Northern Ireland (i.e. a flat annual tax on all housing of about 0.6% of their current values):

Through mechanisms like what I described earlier (1), [Land Value Tax] tends to concentrate power in the hands of landowners, and tends over time to concentrate land ownership in fewer hands. In this long term this is very bad for democracy, and so very bad for an economy whose output depends crucially on the willingness of people to put energy into work.(2)

The modern economy is very different from the one even 50 years ago, let alone the times of Smith and Ricardo.(3) LVT simply isn’t an answer to today’s problems.(4)

1) He did no such thing of course.

2) No, that's the current system (heavy taxation of earned income and profits; heavy subsidies to and light taxation of land ownership) which does that. His observation is complete bollocks of course, as evidenced by the fact that the Home-Owner-Ists keep voting for heavier taxation of incomes, heavier subsidies to land ownership and even lighter taxation of land, and the Home-Owner-Ist elite (bankers, large landowners, landlords, politicians, posh estate agents, property porn stars off the television etc) keep pumping out propaganda about Poor Widows In Mansions.

If there really were something in it for them, wouldn't they have introduced LVT by now rather than phasing it out? Or does anybody out there think that these people have nothing but the best interests of maybe 1% of the population, the PWIMs, at heart and mould policies affecting the other 99% to suit? That our whole economic, social and political system has to be dictated by the interests of PWIMs?

3) Yes, the economy has progressed, as a result of which, a far larger share of GDP goes to land rents than it did when we were largely an agricultural economy, that's a simple matter of observation. Smith and Ricardo both foresaw this and explained why.

4) Not to all of them, no, but shifting from taxing earned income and profits to raising revenue from the rental value of land would solve most economic problems which are solvable, e.g. land price booms and busts with the associated credit bubbles and financial crises; the drag on GDP and unemployment caused by taxing earned income and profits; the war which NIMBYs are waging on 'everybody else'; misallocation of public and private investment etc etc. Some problems aren't solvable, so what?

The post header is TM Henry Law.