Francois Hollande on top form

From The Metro:

The socialist leader batted away previous comments made by Mr Cameron that he would ‘roll out the red carpet’ for French bankers wanting to flee Mr Hollande’s 75 per cent top tax rate.

"I like British humour," he said. "The top rate of tax here is 45 per cent, in France it is 41 per cent. I do not think there is a rush of British people coming to France, except for holidays."

Just horsin' around

From The Daily Mail:

An event rider collapsed and died in the grounds of her country home after apparently being kicked in the chest by one of her horses.

Mother-of-three Jo Lomas, 49, was found only hours after finishing third in her class at a showjumping event. It is suggested that while she was releasing two horses into a paddock beside her home, one bucked in excitement and struck her.

Illustrating yet again the dangers of equasy...

The Pecking Order Of The Pyramid Of Ponzi

There is a distinct pecking order here, which dictates the amount of taxpayers' money you will get:

Banks (and many governments of EU member states) are playing a merry pass the parcel whereby they will keep bailing each other out until all the money is gone.

Bankers who let the cat out of the bag lose their jobs, but are given multi-million pound golden goodbyes.

If you set up a taxpayer-backed Ponzi scheme and granted yourself the right to draw out far, far more than you ever paid in, despite it having been public knowledge from the word go that there was no actual sinking fund (not only is there no fund, there is an accrued deficit of two whole years' worth of GDP) then it's clearly the next generations' problem (not that people working in future had any say in laws passed sixty or seventy years ago), thus doubling up the misery in future.

If you own land, you are entitled to subsidised loans. Especially if you bought land you couldn't really afford. Or indeed if you want to sell land at inflated prices to people who can't really afford those inflated prices.

If you chipped in a few quid a week to a Xmas savings club and the directors run off with the money, you'll be lucky to get half of it back, and the government allows something vaguely approaching normal market forces* to apply. It's also worth noting that the directors of said club were treated far less favourably than directors of failed banks.

* Lloyds/HBOS a government-controlled bank was cordially invited by a government-employed judge to chip in £8 million and the government set up a charity to reimburse them, which accounts for most of the 50p they got back. As RA points out in the comments, the average return with company insolvencies is about 7p in the £1. So the Farepak savers are nowhere near the bottom of the pecking order.

Thanks to MBK for exhibits 2 and 3.

I'm not racist, but...

"Public endorses decision to close sheltered employment centre"

Spotted by Bob E in The Belfast Telegraph:

The general public has overwhelmingly endorsed the case for closing a central London facility providing superior day care and monitoring for some of the nation's most unemployable people of working age, saying the loss-making site was not only failing in its announced aim of helping the inmates become productive and valuable members of society but that the immense and growing costs could not continue to be subsidised by taxpayers any longer.

Tom Logan, piano salesman, spoke for many members of the public in saying the "millions upon millions" budget for the facility could be spent much more effectively on other forms of support for the 600 plus inmates of the facility - for example it only cost £42,000 a year to house someone in prison for example, which was far cheaper than the present cost per head of the facility and whilst in prison there was at least a chance of the inmates honing their existing limited skill sets and possibly learning new ones.  He also suggested there ought to be a further public consultation on the future of the partner facility which exists alongside it in London where "every time an inmate turns up and spends the day sleeping on a bench it still costs a minimum of £300 in "expenses reimbursement" for each inmate.

"We should empty the place out, sell off the furniture and fittings and then the site to the private sector, who would put it to some money generating use" added French polisher Nikki Hollis "and who knows some of the current inmates might even get taken on by the new owners as lift attendants and in minor support roles such as delivering post, clearing up litter, and so on"

A spokesperson for the facility said the public attitude was entirely misplaced. Only the most deserving of cases were admitted to the facility following rigorous testing of lack of ability and unsuitability for work and there was no chance of the facility closing, and that cost was surely not an issue when you considered that left to their own devices the inmates would inevitably end up on the streets or in prison.

He confirmed however that inmates, deeply hurt by the lack of public sympathy for their plight, would be taking long term industrial action lasting several weeks possibly stretching into months in the near future by not attending the facility, although they fully expected to continue to receive their full "inmate stipend" and "additional living allowances" whilst on this protest, as they simply could not do without them.

"Don't call my books mummy porn"

From The Evening Standard:

Mummy porn author EL James has told fans how she hates hearing her work described as "mummy porn". Meeting her British readers for the first time in central London yesterday, the overnight literary sensation said she thought the label "overnight literary sensation" was "lazy". 

James, who has sold almost a million paperback copies of her erotic trilogy in just a week, also revealed she has a "favourite toy" - but caused confusion by refusing to divulge whether she was using the word "favourite toy" as a euphemism for "vibrator". Hundreds of voyeurs paid £20 for the chance to question her at the Institution of Engineering and Technology in Savoy Place. They were also able to meet her afterwards and get copies of the e-book signed.

The world's most expensive car crash?

From The Metro:

US businessman Christopher Cox was involved in the world's most expensive car crash when the Ferrari 250 GTO he was driving collided with another vehicle.

???

I'd like to nominate the opening lap of the 1998 Belgian Grand Prix, probably there are even more legendary car crashes than that.

Splendid bit of lobbying by the financial services sector

Spotted by Bob E in The Guardian. Putting aside the fact that Nest is a huge great scam anyway...

The National Employment Savings Trust (Nest) was set up following Labour's 2008 Pensions Act to provide pensions for lower paid workers in permanent or temporary employment. Two-thirds of the UK's private sector employees do not have a workplace pension.

It was hoped companies could automatically enrol their staff into Nest unless their employer chose to make alternative approved arrangements. This in turn would provide employees with a portable, single pot of savings they could take from one job to the next. But the government withdrew proposals to introduce automatic enrolment. Even though Labour received clearance from Europe, the insurance industry claimed this would fall foul of EU competition rules.

The industry also successfully lobbied to prevent savers transferring in cash they may have built up elsewhere, allowing the pension industry to retain tens of thousands of small pots from savers and reducing the size of Nest. The restriction is not applicable to other pension providers.

Bowing further to industry pressure, the government imposed a £4,400 annual cap on the combined contributions employers and employees can make to the scheme meaning employers with staff earning above £55,000 will be forced to use additional schemes. That earnings level could be lower if an employer chooses to make more generous contributions than the statutory minimum. It makes scheme more bureaucratic for businesses. Again, other schemes do not face this restriction...

A senior Whitehall source involved in framing the legislation suggested the insurance industry "wanted to stop Nest taking in accounts from existing providers which effectively denied Nest scale", while three insurance executives confirmed the industry had engaged in a concerted lobbying offensive on this issue.

Something else that hacks me off about this whole "encouraging people to save" meme assumes that people have to choose some tax-favoured scheme and then regularly pay money into it, as if this solves all our problems. Wrong. All "saving" means is spending less than you earn in the good times so that you can spend more than you earn in the bad times (thus maximising the value of your lifetime consumption; the marginal benefit of having £1 extra to spend when you are poor is far greater than the marginal loss of spending £1 less when you are rich).

What people should do with their spare cash in the meantime is a separate issue - paying off your mortgage is the safest bet, above and beyond that, who knows? Which is exactly what the financial services sector don't want - they want people to have big mortgages which take decades to pay off and at the same time to entrust them with their "savings", i.e. they want individuals to finance their own mortgages, enabling the financial services sector to make profits on both sides of the equation.

Fun Online Polls: EU referendum burblings and maths fun generally

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were pretty conclusive:

Do you take the Tory party's burblings about the possibility of holding an In-Out Referendum on the EU in the slightest bit seriously?

No, it's just another "cast iron promise" - 98%
Yes, it's "cast iron" this time - 2%

It seems the Tories weren't taking it any seriously either, as the topic hasn't been mentioned for several days.

Thanks to everybody who took part, 169 is a very good turnout.
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Seeing as there's nothing else on at the moment, this week's Fun Online Poll is a little test of people's grasp of applied maths.

No clues, use the widget in the side bar.

"Cyclist gets bitten by horse in the mountains"

Spotted by Captain Ranty. Does what it says on the tin. Pedant points for the first person to query whether a cyclist still counts as a cyclist if he's on foot and bonus points for the first person to quip that he was bitten on the wrist rather than in the mountains: