"Slowdown in Chinese manufacturing raises worries about basic numeracy skills"

From The Guardian:

Against the backdrop of a faltering global economy, turmoil in the country’s stock markets and overcapacity in factories, Chinese economic growth has slowed markedly. The country’s central bank expects growth in 2015 to be the slowest for a quarter of a century.

After growing 7.3% in 2014, the economy is thought to have expanded by 6.9% in 2015 and the central bank has forecast that it may slow further in 2016 to 6.8%.

A manufacturer who knows China well pointed out the fundamental fallacies in this to me. (Let's assume that the actual underlying figures and statistics are correct and not a figment of the Communist Party's imagination. They can fib about a couple of percent here or there, but you can't fake an economy quadrupling over ten or twenty years).

1. If an economy is growing, albeit more slowly, then it is still growing. It is not in any way "slowing"; growth of 6.9% is still double average annual compound growth of industrialised societies since the Industrial Revolution.

2. The Chinese economy has grown so quickly over the twenty years that 6.9% growth this year represents a larger absolute increase than 12.5% growth ten or fifteen years ago, to wit:

2000 - GDP per capita RMB 8,000, grows by RMB 1,000 to RMB 9,000 = 12.5% growth
2015 - GDP per capita RMB 45,000, grows by RMB 3,100 to RMB 48,100 = 6.9% growth.

So in absolute terms, the Chinese economy is growing three times as fast as it was fifteen years ago.

Fun Online Polls: Floods & Dry January

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

What is the better way of minimising flood damage?

Scrap subsidies for upland deforestation and allow rivers to meander - 58%
Keep the subsidies, straighten rivers and keep dredging them - 42%

The correct answer is obviously 'both' i.e. upstream we should stop subsidising deforestation and allow rivers to meander (and reintroduce beavers); and downstream we should do more dredging, remembering always that dredging and straightening just shift the problem elsewhere (see Jubilee River and Wraysbury). In other words, if you increase the flow capacity of a river at any point (by dredging, widening or straightening), then you have to make sure that the flow capacity everywhere further downstream is at least as great.

But faced with the deliberately stark choice (basically George Monbiot vs agricultural landowners), the first option is the better one.
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This week's Fun Online Poll.

How will you respond to the new drinking guidelines?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

"Pubs prepare to be hit by 'normal' January as millions unlikely to give up alcohol for a month"

From The Daily Mail:

Pubs have described this month's proposed 'dry January' as 'fairly normal' for the industry, as none of the more than two million drinkers who signed up for a booze-free period are likely to stick to it for more than a few days.

The Dry January campaign has this year been backed by Public Health England, which has led to record numbers pledging to stave off alcohol for a month but only staving it off until next Friday.

While the empty pledges have been applauded by self-appointed 'health experts', it has not sent shockwaves through the licensed trade. Pubs say the 'dry January' is a 'load of bollocks'.

A spokesman for the British Pub and Beer Association said: "Half of New Year's Resolutions since the dawn of time were to give up drinking, so we're understandably not too bothered by this little stunt. They try it on every year, don't they?"

Good kitchen design (5)

Continuing my occasional series…

Image from here:


Today's topic is "doors or drawers" and which of those makes stuff easier to find. Clearly, for the eye level cabinets, you want doors or just shelves.

But for the cabinets under the work surface, you are far better off with drawers (the picture shows both). If you have doors, then you have to bend down and rummage around; they are not very well lit; and if there is something at the back, you have to remove the stuff from the front first.

Traditionally, you have a couple of drawers under the work surface for cutlery and gadgets, but the logic applies to everything else - ingredients and pots and pans etc. In the previous house we lived in, they had two large drawers next to the oven for storing pans, and although it seemed unusual at first, actually, it is a much better way of doing it.

Fun with conspiracy theorists

Instead of making themselves as inconspicuous as possible, the nutters (who overlap with Faux Libertarians to some degree) are making it easy for the Illuminati (or whichever shadowy organisation is ruling the world this week) to identify them by attaching these notices to their front doors:

What baffles is the notion that if a 'government agent' enters the premises, he has to pay a 'fine' of £100,000. The nutters also believe that the Illumaniti run the legal system as well, so surely they also believe that no court would ever enforce the 'fine'.

Good work by Shelter on land banking.

Somebody at Shelter has trawled through the accounts of all the large land bankers home builders and confirmed what we had already guesstimated.

From The Guardian:

The government wants to build 1m new homes in England by 2020. This would mean building 200,000 a year, but the existing construction levels of just over 150,000 are well behind that.

Despite the fact the nine listed housebuilders hold more than 600,000 housing plots, they sold just 66,881 homes between them in their last financial year.

The annual figure of 150,000 is not unduly low by historic standards, the average since 1945 is about 160,000 private sector completions. The years when annual completions were nearer 300,000 was because of council house building.

What is interesting is comparing what their PR people say to the media with what they say to shareholders in their annual reports:

Taylor Wimpey also pinpointed the “slow and complex” planning process and said all sides of the housing debate needed to be patient if more homes were to be built. A spokesman said… "Whilst it is improving, the planning process is slow and complex and a number of conditions need to be fulfilled before development can commence on our sites. A shortage of resources in planning departments also often means that delays occur in this process."

Ho hum. From their 2015 interim report (download from here):

Land bank - movements in period

Brought forward +75,136
Plots acquired +3,620
Strategic land conversions* +5,666
Completions -5,898
Land sales -297
Scope changes -655
Balance at end of period =77,372

Planning status
Detailed planning +45,787
Outline planning +22,508
Resolution to grant +9,077
Total =77,372

So in their accounts they boast that they have enough land with planning for about six years' construction.

* The land bank figures only include land with planning. It does not include 'strategic land' which they bought on spec; in this period they managed to obtain planning for 5,666 plots of 'strategic land' which is transferred to their official land bank.

To cut a long story short, TW have no interest in getting planning any faster, their profit maximising output level is whatever it is (taking all house builders together, they restrict their output to one tenth of total sales in any year) and there is no incentive to build more; in turn, there is no point in getting planning permission for land which they have no intention of using for the next seven or eight years.

Excellent visual gag by the London Sperm Bank.

Spotted on the Tube a couple of days ago:

Quote Of The Year 2015

AK Haart has posted his favourite, so here's mine.

From the BBC:

Mr Carswell said UKIP "needs to change gear and to change its management if it's to go the next level"…

In a reference to Mr Farage's claim that the Oldham by-election postal vote was rigged, he added: "I don't want to wake up the morning after the European referendum and hear it was the postal votes."

Life sadly not copying satire.

From The Daily Mash 13 November 2015:

MOTÖRHEAD frontman Lemmy has reassured fans that he is eternal and will never die.

Following the sad death of the band’s original drummer Phil ‘Philthy Animal’ Taylor, Lemmy has confirmed that he, like the music of Motorhead, will never change in any way…

From the BBC 29 December 2015:

Motorhead frontman Lemmy has died aged 70, two days after learning he had cancer, the British band has announced.

Lemmy formed the rock group in 1975 and recorded 22 albums, including Ace of Spades, as he became one of music's most recognisable voices and faces…

Fun Online Polls: SLOPOTY & how to minimise flood damage

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Sports Lack Of Personality Of The Year Award

Andy Murray - 40%
Tyson Fury - 16%
Lewis Hamilton - 10%
Mo Farah - 7%
Greg Rutherford - 6%
Lizzie Armitstead - 6%
Jessica Ennis-Hill - 5%
Chris Froome - 4%
Kevin Sinfield - 4%
Max Whitlock - 4%

Strange.

Andy Murray ticked nearly all the boxes - not having any noticeable personality or having won or done anything notable this year. The only ones he failed on were we've all actually heard of him and know he plays tennis.

Runner-up Tyson Fury on the other hand, ticked none, having a cool name, taking part in an inherently controversial sport, having strong opinions, however repugnant, and actually having won something notable this year and then being promptly stripped of his title for some obscure reason.

Just goes to show.
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I have no strong opinion on how to minimise flood damage and those who do take an interest have strongly diverging views:

In the green corner, George Monbiot:

Just as remarkable is the collective lack of interest in what happens when rain hits the ground. The government boasts that “we are spending £3.2 billion in flood management and defences over the course of this parliament – half a billion pounds more than in the previous parliament.” Yet almost all the money devoted to freshwater flood relief is being spent at the bottom of river catchments. This means waiting until the wall of water arrives before seeking to contain it; a perfect formula for disappointment.

A rational policy would aim to prevent the flood from gathering in the first place. It would address the problem, literally and metaphorically, upstream. A study in mid-Wales suggests that rainwater’s infiltration rate into the soil is 67 times higher under trees than under sheep pasture. Rain that percolates into the soil is released more slowly than rain that flashes over the surface. But Cumbria’s hills are almost entirely treeless, and taxpayers, through the subsidy regime, pay farmers to keep them that way.

Rivers that have been dredged and canalised to protect farmland rush the water instead into the nearest town. Engineering works of this kind were removed a few years ago from the River Liza in Ennerdale. It was allowed to braid, meander and accumulate logs and stones. When the last great storm hit Cumbria, in 2009, the Liza remained clear and fordable the following day, while other rivers roared into furious spate. The Liza’s obstructions held the water back, filtered it and released it slowly. Had all the rivers of Cumbria been rewilded in this way, there might have been no floods, then or now.

So trees and rewilding good; dredging pointless.

Speaking on behalf of Britian's agricultural landowners (three-quarters of the land by area, one or two percent by value):

Amid all the devastation and recrimination over the floods in Cumbria hardly anybody mentions one factor that may not be the sole cause, but certainly hasn’t helped. That is the almost complete cessation of dredging of our rivers since we were required to accept the European Water Framework Directive (EWF) into UK law in 2000...

It was obvious to people, who depended on the land for their living that failing to keep the rivers clear of sand and gravel would cause them to burst their banks and destroy in a few hours fertility that had taken generations to create, wash away their houses, and drown their livestock… all this changed with the creation of the Environment Agency in 1997 and when we adopted the European Water Framework Directive in 2000. No longer were the authorities charged with a duty to prevent flooding. Instead, the emphasis shifted, in an astonishing reversal of policy, to a primary obligation to achieve ‘good ecological status’ for our national rivers. This is defined as being as close as possible to ‘undisturbed natural conditions.

… they all have the same aim, entirely consonant [sic] with EU policy, to return rivers to their ‘natural healthy’ state, reversing any ‘straightening and modifying’ which was done in ‘a misguided attempt to get water off the land quicker’. They only think it ‘misguided’ because fast flowing water contained within its banks can scour out its bed and maybe wash out some rare crayfish or freshwater mussel, and that conflicts with their (and the EU’s) ideal of a ‘natural’ river.

So dredging good; trees (for which there are no subsidies) and rewilding bad.

The only thing that everybody seems to agree on is that we shouldn't allow building on flood plains, obviously, but that doesn't help people in long established towns.

I know I did a Fun Online Poll on this last year, but let's narrow it down a bit to those two contrasting points of view without an 'other' option.

(I'm always happy to blame the EU when things go wrong, but the EU is also to blame for the subsidies for clearing trees so that's a worst-of-both-worlds as per usual.)

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