Owner-occupation - not all it's cracked up to be

Here are a couple of charts from some research carried out by Andrew J Oswald for the University of Warwick in 1999. That makes the precise statistics a little out of date, but the overall picture seems pretty clear:

Quote of the day

At EU Referendum:

... evidence is accumulating that global warming is most definitely man-made – but not as we know it...

Everybody's offended by something

I'd guess the people most likely to be offended by the infamous Michelle Obama/ape montage are people with severe burns to the face, but hey...It's a pretty rubbish montage anyway. Whoever did this one was much more sophisticated about it:

Shock And Awe

No deaths reported so far, but that's only a matter of time ...

Emailed by Mike.

Climate money 'unaccounted for'

From The Metro:

A total of 20 nations pledged up to 410 million dollars (£247 million) a year in 2001, resulting in a pot that should be worth well over 1.6 billion dollars (£963 million). But only 260 million dollars (£157 million) has been paid into two United Nations funds earmarked for the purpose according to the latest figures, the BBC World Service investigation said.

The EU said the money was collected in "bilateral and multilateral deals", but was unable to provide data to back up the claim...

Artur Runge-Metzger, the senior climate change negotiator for the European Union, said the EU had done what it promised to do. "We can say we met the promise - climate finance has really been stepped up," he told the BBC. But he admitted the EU was unable to provide data to show it did pay the money. "It's sometimes very hard to say what is the climate bit of this financing."

Glorious. Two massive frauds exposed simultaneously.

Health scare story du jour

From The Daily Express: HEALTH SCARE: SALT KILLS 40,000 A YEAR

Are they seriously trying to say that nearly one-in-ten deaths in the UK is caused by salt?

If you go to the 'research' itself, over at The British Medical Journal, it says "Most adult populations around the world have average daily salt intakes higher than 6 g, and for many in eastern Europe and Asia higher than 12 g. International recommendations suggest that average population salt intake should be less than 5-6 g per day. "

In which case people in eastern Europe or Asia should be dropping like flies, right?

Dangerous/Not dangerous

Two headlines from The Metro:

Balloons are 'dangerous', trader is told

Nuclear power station shut by blaze

Channel 4 News covers the climate change fraud emails (again)

Channel 4 gave it another four minutes this evening.

Their clip includes a lot of excerpts from Fox News, whose tone is pretty much as you'd expect it to be, as well as an opportunity for Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, whose launch was announced today, to explain proper science.

Benny either speaks very good English for a German or lousy English for an American... ah... he appears to be an Israeli, that might explain it.

PS, the GWPF can't be all bad - they've got Samuel Brittan on their academic advisory council.

Private Equity Fun

(Prequel: I moseyed into a Borders shop yesterday to see if they'd roll out the red carpet on the off chance I was The Buyer they were looking for, but they didn't, so I quickly thumbed through Swallows and Amazons, made my excuses and left.)

Sequel: according to the BBC, things are looking a bit grim for Borders in the UK - they've stopped taking online orders and some publishers have stopped supplying them. The best bit of that article is right at the end:

... The Borders chain was originally owned by the US book giant of the same name but was sold in June 2007 to Risk Capital Partners. Risk Capital then sold it on to the private equity firm Valco earlier this year.

*ahem*

Borders Inc is a quoted US company.
Risk Capital Partners are a private equity firm.
Valco Capital is a private equity firm.

*/ahem*

As we well know, "private equity" is largely fuelled by [cheap] bank loans, and as we can see from the above example, is a bit of a pyramid scheme. It's a good job that our governments are now using taxpayers' money to bail out the banks' losses on all this, isn't it?

Footnote of the day

The Institute for Economic Affairs posted an article about the Child Poverty Action Group yesterday:

It is a bit tricky to criticise an organisation that describes itself as “the leading charity campaigning for the abolition of child poverty in the UK”. But when a charity enters the realm of political debate, as the Child Poverty Action Group frequently does, then their proposals ought to be examined without the kid gloves on...

*ahem*

They have since added a footnote: "A reader has pointed out that the CPAG receives a significant proportion of its income from various government departments. See Note 3 to the 2008 accounts."

*/ahem*