Your occasional reminder that Jacob Rees-Mogg is a twat

Mirror editorials are usually wide of the mark (to the left, of course), but they've nailed it this time:

Labour blasted top Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg today after he suggested any "ambitious, driven” Brits should stop working from home. The Commons Leader, whose £5m house is a five-minute walk from Parliament, reignited the row over Tory ministers demanding employees get back to their desks...

So far so stupid...

Labour's deputy leader Angela Rayner, the Shadow Future of Work Secretary, said:

“This is an insult to the millions of working people who have worked effectively from home throughout this pandemic. Jacob Rees-Mogg should check the manifesto that he was elected on in 2019 which committed the Government to flexible working."

This 'digital hermit' applauds Ms Rayner.

"This is your paradise"

This week I have been busy writing, rehearsing and recording my new hit song:
It was difficult getting the lead guitar right, so I ended up playing and recording it twice, the one on the left is with a phaser and the quieter one on the right is with chorus. The drums are a drum machine (Roland R5), the rest (guitars, bass, lead and harmony vocals) is all me.

Something else for LVT Man to sort out

Over in the USA, a head of steam is building up under Airbnb.

To be clear, renting out spare rooms, attics, basements, and backyards in owner-occupied properties isn’t the problem. It’s when an investor outbids a family for a second property and turns it into a full-time Airbnb. Or worse, when a holiday rental company does so. Or worse, when a highly-leveraged hedge fund buys a swath of holiday rental companies. Or worse, when a sovereign wealth fund buys a portfolio of hedge funds. It’s why the average house will cost $10+ million within 50 years.

Of course, the last sentence is alarmist nonsense, but the problem is a real one. It's the same problem as the "second home" problem in the more scenic parts of the UK: the incomers have more money to spend and so push the prices up.

In the UK, there is an easy solution which is already being applied in the case of full-time holiday lets, but being applied backwards, as one comes to expect with anything to do with land in this country. If you have a property that is a full-time holiday let, you have to pay business rates on it. However, this is welcomed by most FHL owners, because business rates are much lower than Council Tax, often zero as they fall under small business rate relief.

If second homes were a different use class to main residences, the additional buying power of the second home owner or the FHL owner could be reflected in a higher rate of LVT, levelling up the playing field for local residents, whose buying power is set by local wages.

Even without LVT, the same technique could be used to impose higher business rates or council tax on houses owned by non-residents. Unfortunately, where there isn't a will, there is seldom a way.

Who do you think you are kidding, Mrs Merkel?

From the BBC:

Mr Zelensky [Ukraine's president] opposes the pipeline, which he says threatens Ukraine's security. It will run under the Baltic Sea and double Russian gas exports to Germany...

Mrs Merkel, who is standing down as Germany's chancellor this autumn after 16 years in office, said Berlin agreed with Washington that Nord Stream 2 should not be used against Ukraine. She said sanctions could be used against Moscow under an agreement between Germany and the US, if gas was "used as a weapon".

Mr Zelensky said he was concerned about what would happen in three years when the contract to deliver Russian gas through Ukrainian pipelines runs out. The loss of billions of dollars in transit fees would hit Ukraine's economy hard. Mrs Merkel, who held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, promised to provide more than a billion dollars to help expand Ukraine's renewable energy sector.

Russia already supplies about 40% of the EU's gas - just ahead of Norway, which is not in the EU but takes part in its single market. The new pipeline will increase the amount of gas going under the Baltic to 55 billion cubic metres per year.

Mrs Merkel has tried to assure Central and Eastern European states that the pipeline would not make Germany reliant on Russia for energy.

Where do you start? A few facts which must be patently obvious to everybody else:

1. Russia IS using its oil and gas as economic 'weapons', always has done, always will. Same as the Saudis.

2. Russia has every incentive to build its own pipeline under the Baltic. They won't have to pay Ukraine 'billons of dollars' and Ukraine won't be able to (threaten to} just turn off the taps.

3. Putin is quite happy for Ukraine to go bankrupt, that's a bonus as far as he's concerned.

4. The money which Germany is offering to pay Ukraine to help it 'expand its renewable energy sector' will have zero effect on anything.

5. Germany IS completely reliant on Russian gas for energy. They shut down their coal fired plants (having been bamboozled by the wrong explanation for the Greenhouse Effect) and started phasing out their nuclear plants after the Fukushima disaster (even though Germany isn't an earthquake zone).

6. IIRC, Germany has been reliant on Russian gas for decades. The Russians even gave former the previous Chancellor a (no doubt very well-paid) psuedo-job with Nord Stream, the organisation running the new pipeline.

7. Germany is not going to impose proper harsh sanctions on Russia, as Putin could simply cut off the gas supplies. He can hold out longer than Germany can. The impact of sanctions is slow, drip-drip. The impact of having your electricity sector shut down is immediate.

Killer Arguments Against LVT, Not (489)

Emailed in by Benj from The Library of Economics and Liberty [sic]:

The author picks up on this pro-LVT argument:

Solution: A land tax. The first person to find some unused land gets to claim it, but also, the person who owns a particular piece of land at any given time has to pay a tax approximately equal to the intrinsic value of that land (the value not due to human labour). The tax money should then be distributed evenly among society.

That's a very hypothetical example, but hey. Note the key words "the intrinsic value of that land (the value not due to human labour)". The author is clearly thick and twists it round to the opposite.

Here's the KLN:

To put this in the form of a common-sense moral dialogue:
A: Welcome to the island!
B: Thanks. Now hand over half the surplus value of your land. You owe it to me.
A: This is my land. I’m the one who farmed it. I was going to give you some to help you out, but you’re scaring me.

Who says it's his land? Land ownership can only really exist under the umbrella of a government, i.e. consensus backed up by force. Or just force. What if they were both washed up at the same time but one of them managed to save a revolver and bullets from the ship wreck? Who do you think gets to own the land?

B: You’re entitled to your value-added, sure. But you have to share the raw productivity of nature with me.

This bit is actually correct. But the author is wilfully blind as to what the "raw productivity of nature" means...

A: Seems unfair.
B: Well, let me point out that you seem to have an inborn knack for farming.
A: True, I’ve always had a green thumb.
B: Interesting. I wasn’t born with this talent, so you also owe me half the value of your inborn green thumb. I think I’m going to like this island!

Exactly not. The point about Georgism is not taxing the value of individual skill and effort. No way is the newcomer entitled to half the total value of the output. He is - ultimately - only entitled to half of what he himself would be prepared to pay in rent/tax.

If the land is incredibly difficult to farm and/or the newcomer is absolutely rubbish at farming, the land is of no value to the newcomer and the "intrinsic value of that land" is zero as far as the newcomer is concerned.

If, on the other hand, farming on that island is really easy because there are a load of pre-existing edible plants, fruit-bearing trees and incredibly tame animals, only a small fraction of value of the food is due to individual skill and effort (somebody has to go out and collect it and bring it back) and most of the value is a freebie, like sunshine or rain.

The apparent decline in vaccine effectiveness might be just a statistical thing.

The anti-vaxxers are bound to jump on stories like this (headline about declining vaccine effectiveness chosen at random - but no blog post is complete without a hyperlink).

But how bad is it really? Let's crack open a spreadsheet...

Simplified assumptions

1. In the unvaccinated population, ten per cent of the population will catch XYZ disease each month (about twice as much as for Covid-19).
2. You either recover and are immune for several years, or you die.
3. The vaccine is "60% effective", i.e. in the vaccinated population, only four per cent will catch it each month.

So the sensible decision for any individual ex ante is to get vaccinated.

(It appears that in real life, the Covid-19 vaccines are only about "60% effective" against infection, but about "75% effective" against having a severe case and about "90% effective" against dying, but that then makes comparisons more complicated, so let's just use the simplified assumptions and look at total cases.)

Worked example, first 24 months of the epidemic

Country A and Country B both have a population of one million.
Country A doesn't do vaccinations; Country B (miraculously) vaccinates its whole population on Day One.
So in month 1, there are 100,000 cases in Country A and 40,000 cases in Country B.
That's a clear win for Country B.

As time goes on, it becomes less clear who's winning...

By month 15, there will be about 23,000 cases in each country, there being ever fewer people in Country A who haven't had it and aren't immune.
After that, there will be more cases in Country B, there being still plenty of people who haven't caught it yet.
By month 24, there will have been 920,000 cases in Country A (nearly everybody has had it) and in Country B there will have been 625,000 cases.
So if we calculate vaccine effectiveness after 24 months, looking at total figures, the vaccine was only 32% effective.

After five or ten years, even in Country B, total cases are heading towards 100%, it's just that Country A gets there a lot quicker. If we calculate again after five or ten years, it would look as if the vaccine had little effect whatsoever apart from 'flattening the curve' (itself A Very Good Thing).

But it was still a good decision (for you as an individual) to get the vaccine ex ante, even if ex post it doesn't seem to have made that much of a difference (on the level of the whole population). Even if the worst happens, you have at least gained another few months or years of healthy life.

"Woman in her 30s is airlifted to hospital after being attacked by a COW"

Spotted by TBH in The Daily Mail:

South Wales Police read [sic]: 'At around 3pm yesterday, emergency services were called to a farm in Southgate, Swansea, where a woman, reportedly in her 30s, had been struck by a cow. She was airlifted to University Hospital of Wales where she is being treated for her injuries.'

It is not known what happened to the cow, though there are some unconfirmed reports that it was shot.

That's not much of a sanction, given what happens to most cattle.

The Gower commons are traditionally grazed by local commoners' animals. It is legal in the area and considered to be an essential part of the farm economy of the Gower Peninsula area, as well as being helpful to maintain natural habitats.

That's true! We were on holiday there a few years ago. They don't seem to bother with fences and some sheep sauntered off their field and lay down in the middle of the road, luckily they moved on after a minute or two.

And now, some sensible advice they should print on the back of every tin of dog food:

Pennard Community Council warns on its website that people in the area should 'be aware' of grazing farm animals on the commons and should follow these precautions:
Keep dogs on a leash whenever near grazing animals, unless animals chase the dog, then just let go of the dog;
Keep young children under close parental control;
Do not come between cows and their calves;
Observe the presence of a bull (or bulls) and do not go between them and the cows;
Do not approach within 5m of grazing cattle;
Do not walk between closely assembled grazing animals.

Bus 1: Tesla 0

Excellent bit of footage from @cyclinglawLDN.

UPDATE the person filming this appears to have been standing opposite the Holland & Barrett on Chase Side, see Google Maps. The zoom in as the Tesla moves past is skilfully done - the BP petrol station is about 100 yards down the road.

NHS reverts to type

I have often sung the praises of the UK's vaccination programme - the wife and I got both our jabs without a hitch - but now they are winding it all down (instead of doing a final push to the finish line of around 90% double-jabbed, there is a hard core of refuseniks of say 10%) and the NHS don't seem to care any more.

The Lad went along with some mates to get his first jab at one of the drop-in sessions at Arsenal's football ground (or something like that) and dutifully kept the card they gave him with the date and batch number. He got the email (or text message or whatever they send you) with the date and time for his second jab, which should have been the week before last. He turned up on time, rolled up his sleeve and had his card ready for cross-referencing.

"Sorry, sir" said the admin person opposite the nurse, "It appears you haven't had your first jab yet, so we can't give you your second jab. Please ask your GP to update your records so that we can see it on our system. Then book another appointment."

In a sane world, they could have just pretended to give him a first jab (the doses are identical AFAIAA). If in doubt, just jab people! There might be a few nutcases who end up being vaccinated half a dozen times, but so what?. He has just set off for his fourth attempt at persuading the GP surgery to update his records, having been fobbed off with the usual excuses the previous three times.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for him, but it wouldn't surprise me if they think up yet another excuse for not doing what they are paid to do. I do wonder why they are happy to waste so much of our time and theirs to get out of doing something that would be quicker than endlessly fobbing us off. Or maybe they'll say they'll do it and then simply not do it. Or maybe they'll do it and it still won't show up on the system.

Ah well.

Update. He just came back. The GP surgery took his card last week so that they could 'update the system' but they admitted they'd lost it ("We got a lot of those cards last week.") and gave him a bit of paper with the same info on it instead.

They own land! Give them money!

Spotted by Lola in Money Age:

Payment deferrals keep mortgage arrears at historic low levels

... Commenting on the data, PRIMIS Mortgage Network proposition director, Vikki Jefferies, said: “Today’s continued low levels of arrears reflects the fact that the industry has managed to protect those customers who have been most affected by the pandemic. There is no doubt that government schemes such as furlough and the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), combined with payment deferrals from lenders, have supported customers and the market during this difficult time.

“As these support schemes come to an end, however, it will be vital to provide proactive and sustained support for brokers. The housing market has been a driving force behind the UK’s economic recovery from the coronavirus crisis, but it’s important to note that the long-term impact of the pandemic may not yet be visible and there remain a number of borrowers who faced financial difficulty pre-pandemic who have continued to build up arrears through the crisis.”

"supported customers and the market" means "kept house prices high and rising", of course. I'm not sure why "brokers are worthy of support, if they chucked all these subsidies in the bin, there'd still be enough for them to do.