From The Evening Standard:
The Evening Standard's Dispossessed Fund has secured £1 million for charities tackling gangs and young Londoners at risk of anti-social or criminal behaviour…
The charities will now be able to invest in knives, pickaxe handles and stab proof vests, with fire arms for those who dare venture into the most violent gang territories.
From the BBC:
Three members of an east Belfast dog pack have admitted animal cruelty offences described by the police and USPCA as among the most serious they have seen.
Buster, a bull terrier, and his sons Corky and Wizard, all from Island Street, admitted attacking cats and other animals in their neighbourhood.
They also pleaded guilty to causing unnecessary suffering to four puppies. Jasper, an English Mastiff from McAllister Court, pleaded guilty to similar charges.
The investigation into the pack's activities began more than two years ago when video footage was recovered from a mobile phone. One clip showed dogs attacking a badger. In another, the same dogs set on a cat that they had trapped in a cage, tearing it to pieces.
A police officer welcomed the animals' guilty pleas and said pets and wildlife should contact them if they had suspicions about such activity.
The judge's order that the four dogs be put down has been suspended pending an appeal to the European Court of Animal Rights.
No links because this is all general knowledge/you'll have to take my word for it.
I've no particular strong opinion about fracking one way or another, but what I notice is that the usual rules of Georgists one side vs Home-Owner-Ists on the other, with the Greenies sometimes coming down on one side and sometimes on the other with no particular coherence, no longer really apply.
Exhibit One
Michael Fallon, arch-Homey and eternal LVT-opponent ("Poor Widows In Mansions being hounded by Armies Of Surveyors" ad infinitum) was on Radio 4 this morning to "sell" the Tories policy of allowing local councils to keep a relatively large share of fracking revenues (a Georgist principle and a good one).
He had prepared a rather strange answer to the stock question "Why?", which he trotted out more or less word-for-word twice, it went roughly like this: "Local councils should be glad that fracking will lead to more investment and jobs in their areas, so it's important that we allow them to keep some of the tax receipts to pay for the investment required to cope with the new investment and jobs."
The presenter asked him straight out, "So to whom does the shale gas belong?" to which he promptly and accurately replied: "It belongs to the government."
The presenter's follow up question was "In the USA, the shale gas usually belongs to the landowner, but seeing as it belongs to the government, why are you being so niggardly? Why not let local councils keep a half or even all the tax revenues, i.e. the value of the gas?"
Fallon replied that he thought the government had got the shares between local and central government "about right" but did not disagree with the general principle, he did not say that the Yanks have a much better system (which you'd normally expect him to say).
Exhibit Two
Fallon was then on Channel 4 News at 7 o'clock, up against some Greenie, who came out with the usual Homey/NIMBY spiel: "Britain is a small island, we have no room for this, it's going to ruin our land, the countryside etc.", which all of a sudden Fallon didn't seem to think was a problem.
Unusually, it turns out that our enemies' enemy is also our enemy, it was the sort of feeble TV debate you wanted them both to lose.
Exhibit Three
Normally, the Greenies and Lib Dems are thoroughly pro-EU, but all of a sudden they are not. Channel 4 News had some professor guy of that persuasion who disputed the claim that fracking would mean lower gas prices (which is the case in the USA, gas prices have fallen by two-thirds, it is said), because, he said, that gas would be freely traded with other European countries, so instead of us saving two-thirds, that saving would be diluted among all EU countries, which means that gas prices would only fall by five per cent (or whatever).
Well ho hum.
a) Either you are in favour of us being in the EU or you are not, you can't pick and choose.
b) If you are in favour of the EU, you must also be in favour of share-and-share alike, share the gains and share the losses.
c) From the Greenies' and Lib Dems' point of view, low gas prices are inherently A Bad Thing, because that means more fossil fuel will be used, which in turn causes Catastrophic Climate Change, innit? So they ought to be seeing the negligible price fall as a plus.
d) It doesn't actually matter. The total value of the shale gas (minus extraction costs) is whatever it is. If we have an export ban, then our prices fall a lot and the tax receipts will be correspondingly low. If we sell it for a higher price abroad, then prices will only fall slightly but tax receipts will be much higher.
On the whole, the Greenies and Lib Dems are in favour of higher taxes (in this case, they would be correct, land and natural resources are the perfect subject for taxation). So assuming that tax receipts on natural resources are spent for everybody's benefit equally, it actually leads to a better outcome if the shale gas is sold for the highest price on the international market - what you don't save in gas bills you'll save in lower other taxes (in principle - in practice we are going to get stiffed either way).
Exhibit Four
It is widely reported that fracking caused a minor earthquake up near Blackpool, this is accepted unquestioningly and trotted out by Channel 4 yet again.
But I'm thinking, they've detonated colossal multi-megaton nuclear bombs, underground, overground, Wombling free, and I've never seen much evidence that this causes earthquakes (even though I'd happily believe it, being rather anti-nuclear weapon by instinct).
So is it really possible that some people pumping a bit of high pressure liquid down into what is not exactly an inter-tectonic plate fault line caused an earthquake?
Exhibit Five
They showed the usual clips of Yanks lighting gas coming out of their taps, which they blame on fracking. I doubt whether it's that simple, but even assuming it is, so what?
We know that the Americans have an absolutely appalling attitude towards health and safety, accidents etc. Their economy/population is a bit smaller but otherwise as developed as Europe, but in terms of road deaths, rail crashes, industrial accidents, oil spills, pollution, explosions of unsafely stored flammable materials, friendly fire incidents, they are barely above Third World levels.
So however awful their record on fracking might (or might not) be, it's pretty much irrelevant as far as I am concerned.
From The Daily Mail:
Dire warnings that half of Britons will be stupid by 2050 are an 'underestimate', a shock report warns today.
The stupidity epidemic could be far worse than predicted because experts did not factor in how much stupider we are getting as we age, it says.
For example, most adults no longer realise that as stupidity is not an infectious disease, there cannot be an epidemic thereof.
The report blames junk science for confusing the public about healthy eating, and says ministers and GPs are failing to get a grip of the problem, with NHS systems 'pouring petrol on the flames of stupidity'.
More than a quarter of adults (26 per cent) are stupid, up from just 8 per cent in 1980.
In 2007, an alarming government review warned that by 2050, stupidity would affect half of all adults and cost the economy £50 billion a year. Yet a report by the National Stupidity Forum says the predictions were 'optimistic' and underestimated the 'true scale of the problem'.
According to today's study, by 2050 stupidity could be affecting more than 100% of all adults.
The forum – which comprises doctors and other experts – says the Government is focusing too much on propaganda rather than helping those who are stupid to realise how much fake science they are paying to be bombarded with.
It also describes a reward system for GPs, which pays them to record that patients are stupid without having to offer any genuinely sensible dietary advice, as being 'unfit for purpose'.
Pub Curmudgeon has written up the results to last week's Fun Online Poll here and launched this week's Poll: "How many units of alcohol do you drink in a typical week? (be honest)"
Vote here or use the widget in the side bar.
NB, what a normal person considers to be one drink (pint of beer, 500 ml can of beer, largish glass of wine, double vodka etc) is about two of their newfangled "units".
Some more closely related KLNs are "House prices will plummet and millions will be trapped in negative equity" and "House prices will plummet and banks will go bankrupt
".
Firstly, as the LVT envisaged here would greatly reduce the tax payable by prospective and recent first-time buyers, so there is no reason to assume that house prices would change much.
Secondly, even if house prices fell by half, recent purchasers would have so much more extra post-tax income that they would be able to pay to pay off their mortgages in ten years, and they would be out of nequity after five years anyway.
Thirdly and slightly more radically, assuming that house prices fell by half, what would happen if all higher loan-to-value owner-occupiers' purchase mortgages were written down to the new reduced selling price of the home on which they are secured so that people can still sell their homes and walk away/start again if they so wish?
Let's assume that the 'losses' are split three ways: between borrower, bank and government/taxpayer generally.
a) Total outstanding residential mortgages in the UK are about £1,200 billion, of which approximately one-quarter relates to mortgage equity withdrawal and buy-to-let mortgages, which leaves £900 billion under consideration.
b) If you just look at principal, the numbers don't look too bad. Because of the fairly straight-line distribution of loans to value, the total principal amount of mortgages on which there would be a degree of write off is about £675 billion and the total write-off of principal would be one-third of that = £225 billion (or about 2% or 3% of what UK banks claim, probably spuriously, are their total assets).
c) That £675 billion is only part of the story of course. It is just a number on a bit of paper. What is actually relevant is the total future cash flows going from borrowers to banks. Assuming an interest rate of 4% and twenty years left to run, the total repayments for £675 billion in mortgages are £50 billion per annum, with total payments over the next 20 years of £1,000 billion.
d) The £450 billion replacement mortgages could be at a higher interest rate. So if these were at 6% interest, total annual repayments would be £40 billion, meaning that banks would receive £800 billion over the next 20 years, a loss to banks of £200 billion and a gain to borrowers of £200 billion.
e) The government could chip in (say) half that and give banks non-interest bearing government bonds with a nominal value of £100 billion which are redeemed at £5 billion a year for 20 years.
f) So borrowers would see their mortgage repayments fall by £10 billion a year or one-fifth (hooray); banks only have an annual shortfall of £5 billion (which they can easily recover by reining in salaries and bonuses at the top end) and the exercise only costs the taxpayer £5 billion a year for the next 20 years. Recent purchasers will end up paying the lion's share of that £5 billion in future, so it all pans out nicely.
From the BBC
A week after recreational marijuana was allowed for sale in Colarado (sic), cookie stores say they have already begun selling out.
Sales of the cookies, which is available to anyone, have already hit $5 million.
Erin Phillips, owner of 7-11, has seen a "vast demographic" of people visiting the store.
She told BBC Radio 5 live's Up All Night: "The demand has just been huge... some of my competitors have already run out of products. It's amazing."
UPDATE: Newsthump beat us to this one by over a week.
From The Daily Mail:
The uncharismatic and unpopular French president Francois Hollande made secret payments to a magazine to persuade them to suggest he was having an affair with married actress 20 years his junior.
French magazine Closer reported today that the 59-year-old president was having an affair with actress Julie Gayet, backing this rather implausible claim with carefully staged photographs, after months of swirling rumours that Hollande was bringing shame on France by actually keeping it in his pants.
Closer's Friday edition carried a seven-page report on the alleged infidelity under the headline 'Francois Hollande and Julie Gayet - the president's secret love'.
The weekly tabloid's actions earned rapid praise from the president's spin doctors, who said that his poll ratings had recovered significantly.
UPDATE: Newsthump wrote much the same article on five days later.
