Can Someone Explain Australia?

OK. First up, it's a cute song, and I've nothing against seeing some of Ms Minogue.

But... here's the things they show in the ad:-

- beaches
- sports
- bit of modern art
- fishing
- restaurants
- wines
- pubs

You can go to France, Italy or Spain and do all that, can't you? So, why spend a couple of days and a grand flying there and getting jetlagged, when you can nip over the channel?

An Objective Analysis

In the spirit of togetherness as befits the season of goodwill to all men I thought it might be timely to assess and complement our soon to be ex (hopefully) EU 'partners'...

Austria	Switzerland’s less fashionable neighbour. Still thinks the Austro Hungarian Empire is a thing.
Belgium	Created by us. Good tank country. How did it end up with the best race track in the World?
Bulgaria	The USSR’s favourite Cold War thugs
Croatia	Part of the Balkans. Hence Trouble
Cyprus	Worst sherry in the world
Czech	Great engineers
Denmark	Bacon and Hamlet
Estonia	Battlefield of choice for Russia and Germany
Finland	Fantastic rally and GP drivers and fought the Reds to a standstill.
France	The place you drive through to get to Switzerland and Italy
Germany	Came second. Twice.
Greece	Don’t trust a Greek bearing gifts
Hungary	More Soviet thugs and like Austria still think the Austro Hungarian Empire is a thing.
Ireland	Highly intelligent with a great sense of humour and Guiness
Italy	Best food anywhere. Ferrari. Maserati. Lancia. OSCA. Need I say more?
Latvia	See Estonia above
Luxembourg	False teeth and tax evasion
Malta	Errrr?
Netherlands	Invented Capitalism. And were indirectly responsible for the Glorious Revolution.
Poland	Plumbers for hire. More excellent battlefields for Germany and Russia
Portugal	Our oldest ally. Port.
Romania	Hitler’s oil fields and more thugs for whoever.
Slovakia	Think Czecho..
Slovenia	Another Balkan state = trouble.
Spain	Lazy. Like killing donkeys and bulls
Sweden	Abba. Blondes. Norway with a sense of humour.

Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year to you all.

What if it's Everyone Else That is Right?

From Sky News

The head of the Lake District National Park Authority in Cumbria says the rugged landscape excludes too many people and must change to attract a more diverse mix of visitors.

His warning comes after attempts to make the UNESCO World Heritage site more inclusive have sparked a series of rows with conservationists.

...

Research shows visitors to the Lake District, where the rugged fells inspired the romantic poets and author Beatrix Potter, are too heavily weighted towards older, able-bodied white people.

Why do people even assume that everyone else wants this? My idea of a nice holiday is going to France, barbecuing mergeuz, drinking wine, swimming in a pool, reading books and exploring the history in the local area. I'm not going to go to a place with even worse weather than Wiltshire to spend my days walking up and down muddy hills wearing a cagoule.

I suspect the people who do it probably have a history of doing it. It's what they did with their parents as kids, so they carry on doing it. The people who came over from the Caribbean or from India didn't do it, so it's never grown.

Killer Argument Against LVT (475)

The "Golden Rule" is that "he who has the gold, makes the rules" and, as this, rather lengthy, essay proves, those who have the gold in today's world, have interests diametrically opposed to the transfer of taxation from the productive economy to land, in fact, precisely the reverse.

It would appear that some at the Bank of England aren't that stupid...

Subsequent to my recent post, Surely, the Bank of England is not that stupid? (the BoE said banks should increase mortgage-to-income multiples if house prices rose), comes this in The Telegraph (also emailed in by Lola):

Ultra-low borrowing costs have fuelled a huge property boom that pushed house prices beyond the reach of young buyers, the Bank of England has warned.

A five-fold surge in house prices over the past 50 years can be “more than accounted for by the substantial decline” in the cost of borrowing, according to research by the Bank.

Its economists warned that even a housebuilding spree would not have stopped a huge rise in prices caused by the long-term plunge in rates - undermining claims that Britain's property bubble has been caused by a lack of new homes.

I assume that they are referring to this Staff Research Paper, which goes into a lot of detail, but can be summarised as follows (exactly as we explain it):

a) Rent as proportion of average gross earnings is very stable, bobbing around at 35% - 40% for the past three decades (Figure 10). So it can't be 'lack of supply' otherwise rents would have increased faster.

b) Rent (a constant) divided by required monthly repayment rate (interest + principal) = mortgage.

c) Mortgage + deposit = house price.

The paper does not seem to make recommendations, although you'd have thought those are obvious...

"More High Street/Business rates fun"

Emailed in by Lola from The Telegraph:

Harrods’ Knightsbridge store alone will pay £17.1m this year in business rates, according to property consultant Altus Group. Retailers large and small claim the property tax is deeply unfair because it hits high street stores far harder than online players such as Amazon, which rely on cheap out-of-town warehouses.

“There isn’t a level playing field and nobody’s tried to put in place a level playing field,” Ward says, “Until there is a fundamental review of the business rates system, then I think that the high street is really doomed.”

According to this, Harrods has an annual turnover of £2 billion, most of that will be from its flagship store in Knightsbridge, so they are paying less than 2% of their turnover in Business Rates.

Does he not realise that there is a perfectly level playing field? If he thinks he can make more profit by shutting down the flagship store and just selling stuff online from an out-of-town warehouse, then why doesn't he do it?

He doesn't do it because he knows perfectly well that the £17.1 million a year they pay is only a fraction of the extra profit they can make by trading from a huge building in the swankiest area of London, surrounded by obscenely wealthy people and tourists who have nothing better to do that go to Harrods and spend money.

Xmas gear change

Celine Dion, "I met an angel on Christmas Day", up a cheeky semi-tone half way through the last line of the middle eight at 1 min 52 secs.

Fun With Numbers

We were always taught that there are three ways to solve a quadratic equation i.e. something in the format Ax^2 + Bx +C = 0 - factorisation, the quadratic formula and completing the square  (see Cliff Notes).

Maths genius Po-Shen Loh has finally realised (or finally admitted?) that at this is all Emperor's New Clothes stuff (which maths people have used to show off and/or torture generations of pupils), and has explained a method that is so blindingly simple and obvious that a load of people - including me - are thinking "Damn! Why didn't I think of that?" (ignore the ghastly soundtrack):



The beauty of it is, even if you forget the precise steps, as long as you understand the logic in his video (which I won't bother paraphrasing, just watch the video starting at 1 min 46 seconds, it takes him less than a minute to explain), you can reverse engineer this method yourself.

1. Make sure that A = 1, so if you are given 2x^2 - 16x + 30 = 0, divide it all by 2 to get x^2 - 8x + 15 = 0.

2. Divide B by 2 and square it; deduct C (NB, if the constant at the end is negative, then add it!); then find the square root of the result, that is our new number "u" (I don't know why he chose "u").

3. x is then negative half of B, plus or minus "u".

For example:

x^2 - 8x + 15 = 0

16 - 15 = 1, the square root of 1 = +/- 1 ("u" in his notation).

x = 4 +/- 1 = 3 or 5.

Apparently it works in all circumstances, even if the answers are fractions or include the square root of a negative number.

Surely the Bank of England is not that stupid?

Emailed in by Lola from FT Adviser, subject line 'FFS'.

The Bank of England would expect to loosen its mortgage affordability rules if the UK experienced strong house price growth, it has said.

In a working paper titled Modelling the Distribution of Mortgage Debt, out this week (July 3), the central bank tested the regulation of affordability in two different scenarios — a ‘business as usual’ one and one it named the ‘upside scenario’.

So they not think about what they have just written?

You could just as well turn that first part round and state:

If the Bank of England loosens its mortgage affordability rules, the UK will experience strong house price growth.

To all intents and purposes, credit availability and house prices (aka 'The Housing Crisis') are the same thing.

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence...

Damn and blast.

I wanted to go to the shops with the lass yesterday evening in the Del Sol. Once we got up to speed, I noticed that the rear left tyre was flat, so we went home to try again in the MX-5.

The battery  in that was completely dead, which sort of serves me right as the battery is three years old, they never last long in MX-5's and it had died on me a couple of weeks ago. So a trip to Halfords it is.

Not to worry, say I, let's just go in the MR2 Roadster. On the way home, I noticed that the power steering was defective and it would barely turn right. My local garage is now shut for Xmas/New Year and I can't take it in until January.

To be updated during the course of the day as matters progress...
-----------------------
Del Sol - AA fitted the spare wheel for me, we found the puncture on the tyre, which was on the inside wall one inch up from the ground. Lord knows how that happened. He told me it was irreparable, I went to the tyre place, they concurred, and fitted me a set of Uniroyal Rainsport 3's, the same as I have on the other two. £220 for all four. It is now noticeably nicer to drive.

MX-5 - not even the red light for the immobiliser was blinking when I got in and tried this afternoon, so I assumed the battery was stone cold dead. Funnily enough, it started first time, no problem. How can batteries recharge themselves overnight? We will never know. Drove to Halfords who tested it and told me the battery was fine and I just need to drive round for three-quarters of an hour to fully charge it, which I did.

MR2 Roadster - I played musical cars so I could put the MX-5 on the side of the drive which is easier to get in and out of, which meant juggling the MR2 sideways. Power steering is completely dead, and it took ten iterations before it was in place.

Two out of three ain't bad, I suppose.