The world has gone completely mad.

A lot of diesel cars are clearly labelled 'diesel' somewhere near the filler cap so that you don't put in petrol by mistake, that's a good idea.  I can never remember which fuel my wife's car uses, so it's good that there's a visual reminder that it's a diesel. If an organisation runs a large fleet of cars with lots of occasional users, I suppose it makes sense to label the petrol ones 'petrol' as well. That's all fine.

But I walked past a parked police car today and noticed that next to the filler cap, in one inch high letters was the word "UNLEADED".

FFS, can you even buy leaded petrol any more and if so, where? I thought you had to buy unleaded and chuck additives in.

(I didn't dare take a photo to prove it because some coppers don't take kindly to that sort of thing, and I was going to take the piss out of them anyway).

Nearly as stupid are all the vehicles with a sticker on the back saying "Limited to 70 mph". That's the maximum speed limit anyway, so nobody would reasonably expect them to drive any faster.

Joined up government

From the BBC:

Five offshore PFI companies paid little or no corporation tax during a five-year period despite making profits of nearly £2bn, the BBC has learned.

The five companies specialised in lending money through Private Finance Initiatives (PFI). They own hundreds of public assets including schools, hospitals and even police stations. The BBC has also learned that a small number of big offshore companies are currently on a buying spree.

I know that the whole PFI thing was a corrupt taxpayer funded giveaway and deliberately intended to make massive losses for the government/taxpayer in exchange for political party donations and cosy jobs post politics, but on a practical level, how can they get away with it?

Their 'tenant' is the government! Can't the government qua tenant just withhold 20% tax at source (like any other tenant of a non-UK registered landlord is supposed to do)? If the poor PFI companies think they've been overcharged, well it's up to them to submit proper accounts and tax returns.

Insanely stupid reader's letter of the day

From City AM:

Isn't the logical progression from the universal basic income idea so in vogue at the moment a national maximum wage?

People should be careful what they wish for.

Jim Smart

We can also file this one under "people with wildly inapposite surnames".

Market forces, differential pricing, general hilarity

From the BBC:

Supermarket chain Tesco has cut the price of women's disposable razors to match that of a similar product for men. The move is a victory for campaigners who demanded an end to what they saw as sexist pricing on the high street.

Last year campaigners highlighted the higher price of many toiletries marketed at women compared to the lower price of similar goods for men. All of the big four supermarkets were criticised.

The mind boggles.

Do people genuinely not know that all disposable razors are more or less exactly the same (the only real difference is the number of blades), it's just that razors marketed at women are made with pink plastic rather than boring white? If some people are prepared to pay extra for the ones with pink handles, then why shouldn't retailers charge more them? If I were a woman unhappy with paying over the odds for the pink ones, I'd just buy the white ones instead rather than mounting some campaign.

Proof that the Bank of England has absolutely no F*****g Clue...

Here

What an utter twat.

Update: 13:25

Proof that he's a twat. (Well, one proof factor in a whole range of factors).

Here

And this section is always worth a laugh for its endless contradictory news items.

Here

Pokémon Go is the new sat-nav

When sat navs first became widely used, for years the papers would be full of stories about people driving into lakes and lorries stuck in narrow alleys because they blindly followed their sat-navs. The Daily Mirror did a top ten mishaps back in 2008.

Then taking selfies became all the rage, Wiki has a list of serious injuries and deaths resulting from this activity.

And now it looks as if we are going to be bombarded with people coming a cropper because they were playing Pokémon Go.

Here are a few from the past week:

Florida man shoots at Pokemon Go players after hearing the teens say 'Did you get anything?' and mistaking them for burglars

Teen Killed Trespassing While Playing Pokemon Go

Pokemon GO players stranded 100ft underground in caves while searching for characters

Doesn't have the same appeal as cow attacks though.

Tesco Accused of Using Fictional Sounding Farm Names

From the Telegraph

Tesco has drawn criticism for using fictional British-sounding farm names on labelling for a range of meat and fresh produce, some of which is imported.

The made-up names are Woodside, Willow and Boswell farms on labelling for pork, chicken and beef, as well as Nightingale and Redmere on salad and vegetable items, Rosedene on berries, apples and pears and Suntrail Farms on a range of imported fruit.

I'm appalled. As are my friends, Aunt Bessie and the Jolly Green Giant.

Oops! Redwood lets slip flagship tory economic policy...

...over at his blog, the Rt Hon. John Redwood MP has been busy deflecting criticism on his post about UK productivity.

A few of his pesky readers have been pointing out that the UK runs a big trade deficit and questioning the sustainability of borrowing (public and privately) circa 10% of GDP to keep the party going.

When a fed up sounding JR snaps back to 'Ken Moore'

"[Running a trade deficit year on year] has proved to be sustainable as many people wish to invest in the UK or buy assets here. Germany sells rich people expensive cars they do not need, and the UK sells them expensive flats so they can have additional homes."

And that's it in a nutshell, the UK exports its land (and rents) so people like John Redwood can swan about in expensive motors.  This isn't just coincidence, it is actually an economic policy.

All entirely predictable, and entirely predictably stupid.

From the FT:

In a dusty industrial estate next to the world’s biggest iron ore port in Western Australia’s remote Pilbara region, business has never been so bad.

“The rents got so high in the town that when the boom ended, businesses began to die off everywhere,” says Jo Woodward, owner of Jems, a ramshackle building with an eviction notice stuck to its padlocked gate...

Western Australia’s “Pilbara Cities” plan was launched in 2010, at the height of a boom driven by iron ore and the discovery of natural gas off the coast. Several billion dollars have been spent on hospitals, roads and housing to transform the dusty mining towns of about 15,000 people each into living spaces that attract families.

But fears are growing that the drop in mining construction and a recent slide in iron ore prices threaten the future of the flagship project...

“We are focusing our efforts on the type of ‘city-building’ amenities and services such as parks and cafés, which will ensure families want to come and live here,” says Kelly Howlett, mayor of Port Hedland.

“A population of 50,000 is a realistic target. About 1,000 people make Western Australia their home every week and they can’t all go to Perth,” she says.

But locals warn a cooling economy is putting this at risk. Rents have halved in Karratha, record numbers of properties are listed for sale in both towns and some new housing developments lie empty.

"Stupidity UK - It's worse than feared"

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'.

Osborne's Help To Waste Time Programme

From the Independent

In his speech to the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, the Chancellor will unveil the full requirements of a £300m-a-year Help to Work programme starting next April. It will impose the most stringent conditions ever on the long-term unemployed as Mr Osborne pledges to end the option of “signing on as usual”.

Instead, 200,000 people a year who have claimed jobseeker’s allowance for three years will lose benefits unless they take up one of three options after two years on the Work Programme:

• Thirty hours a week for six months of community work such as making meals for the elderly, cleaning up litter and graffiti or charity work, plus 10 hours of “job search activity”.
• Daily attendance at a jobcentre  to search for work instead of a  brief interview once a fortnight.
• A mandatory intensive regime for claimants with underlying problems such as mental health, drug addiction or illiteracy.

People who refuse to take part will lose four weeks’ worth of benefit for their first breach of the rules and three months’ worth for a second offence.

Which pretty much means that people who don't want to work will turn up every day at the Job Centre, do a cursory, mandatory look at the jobs and then leave. Why spend 6 hours a day cleaning up litter when you can spend 30 minutes a day at the job centre? It's utterly spiteful, will cost more money and will have no effect on the unemployed.

Neal Lawson, who chairs the left-leaning pressure group Compass, said the long-term unemployed “need deep long-term help to get them working”. “Short-term gimmicks to light up the Tory conference will cost the taxpayer more and further stigmatise the most vulnerable in our society,” he added.

No, they really don't. I've recently been working in Newbury, not far from the Job Centre, as it happens, and there's enough business to keep it open. However, I also counted at least a dozen retail jobs in the town, few of which were asking for experience. Some part-time, some full-time. I'm sure that a lot of the long-term unemployed could start working in Greggs without much "long-term help".

As it is, instead of just converting to LVT and dishing out the money as CI payments and closing down the pointless job centres, we're going to have a choice between paying for the software and bureaucracy of daily check-ins at Job Centres (at whatever absurd rate the government pays) or paying a bureaucracy of people in a new quango (with a fancy website) offering advice to people who don't want to take a job because of the effects on their benefits. 

Well, there's your clue right there...

'I had no idea he was gay': Jason Collins' former fiancee of EIGHT YEARS said she is shocked at NBA star's announcement

In other news: "I had no idea he didn't enjoy cooking" says wife of TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS whose husband has now admitted he can't even boil an egg

"The 10 stupidest Islamic terrorists"

Spotted by MBK at The Telegraph.

It's a great list and everything (maybe there's a tie-on with the fact that only two people from an Islamic or even a Muslim country have ever won a Nobel Prize for Physics or Chemistry?) but he doesn't seem mention this week's Islamic heroes:

Omar Mohammed Khan, Mohammed Hasseen, Anzal Hussain, Mohammed Saud, Zohaib Ahmed and Jewel Uddin admitted preparing an act of terrorism. All six will be sentenced on 6 June.

Five of them took a homemade bomb to an EDL rally in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, last June but arrived after it ended. They were caught after their car was stopped and found to have no insurance*.

Police and security services** had no intelligence*** about the planned attack, although one of the would-be killers, Jewel Uddin, was under surveillance in relation to another terror plan.

* Top tips for criminals: keep you car insured, MOT'd and the licence up to date. It is quite surprising how many criminals get caught out during routine traffic stops.

** WTF does "security services" actually mean? I really don't like the vagueness of that expression, nor what it might signify. It does smack rather of police state.

*** Luckily for the long-suffering EDL, not only did the "police and security services" have no intelligence but the Mohammeds didn't have any either.

Ask some proveably stupid people a loaded question...

From today's IPSOS MORI poll:

Q13 Which two or three, if any, of the following areas do you think the UK Government spends the most money on?

The NHS/Healthcare - 50%
Defence and armed forces - 28%
Overseas aid - 22%
Social services - 14%
State pensions - 12%
Schools - 11%
Benefit payments - 10%
Local authority services - 9%
Police - 5%
Care for the elderly - 3%
Other/Don’t know - 6%
[Re-arranged in descending order]

Quite how stupid are people? The correct running order, give or take a few billion and depending how you classify stuff*, is of course as follows:
1= State pensions, old age welfare (especially if you include public sector pensions)
1= NHS/Healthcare
3 Schools
4 Working age benefit payments/social services/Child Benefit
5 Defence and armed forces
6= Police
6= Overseas aid (if you include EU and UN payments, then it would leapfrog "Police")
8 Local authority services (rubbish collection and a bit of road maintenance?)

* "Care for the elderly" could be included under "Pensions" or "NHS"; do "public sector pensions" go under "State pensions"?; do we include "NHS/Healthcare" and "State pensions" gross or deduct the PAYE that never leaves the system (the government gives with one hand and takes back a third of NHS wages with the other, etc.)
--------------------------------------------
Then you ask the same proveably stupid people...

Q14 As you may know, the government is reducing the overall level of public spending as part of the process of reducing borrowing. Which two or three, if any, of the following areas do you think the UK Government should cut the most money from?

Overseas aid - 55%
Benefit payments - 44%
Defence and armed forces - 28%
Local authority services - 10%
Social services - 8%
The NHS/Healthcare - 5%
Police - 4%
State pensions - 3%
Schools - 2%
Care for the elderly - 1%
Other/Don’t know - 16%

You can cut "Overseas aid" (and EU and UN payments) to £ nil as far as I am concerned, but they are relatively small amounts to start off with, so the potential saving is not huge. Working age "Benefit payments" are pretty measly (barely 5% of government spending transfer payments with as much again for Child Benefit/Child Tax Credits), and so on and so forth.

The only item on that list where you can make big savings, in absolute terms, is the NHS. The NHS gets great value for money with what they spend on actual healthcare; the problem is all the crap, the bureaucratic reshuffles; ridiculous salaries for the fat cats; the nanny state advertising; translating leaflets into umpteen languages etc.
--------------------------------------------
The only way to get a sensible answer to such a question is to provide a few facts (approx. figures from memory), I would have phrased it thusly:

Q14 As you may know, the government is reducing the overall level of public spending as part of the process of reducing borrowing. Which of the following areas do you think the UK Government could cut the most money from?

Private sector procurement and subsidies to banks and other corporates (35% of government spending)
Public sector salaries/pensions (30% of government spending)
State pensions (20% of government spending*)
Working age benefit payments (5% of government spending*)
Child Benefit/Child Tax Credits (5% of government spending*)
Overseas aid, payments to EU and UN (5% of government spending)

Surely, if you want to reduce waste, you don't just look at how easy a target is, you look at how big it is?

* As mentioned, these aren't really government spending, they are transfer payments.

Being entirely fair, he did publish his own address, even though that was probably stupidity rather than an act of defiance

Awesomely stupid headline

From today's Evening Standard, here's the paper version in case they change the online edition:

The Daily Mash on top form

From The Daily Mash:

Two teenage girls who fell asleep while sunbathing on a rural road were airlifted to hospital after they were hit by a car.

Samantha Schermanhorn and Kaylie George, both 13, were reportedly struck by a vehicle driven by Samantha's 19-year-old cousin. They were lying down on the Beaver County, Pennsylvania, street on Sunday afternoon.

Stupid cow

Spotted by Kevin F. at Theo Spark

One-sided Economics by people who don't know as much as they pretend they do

From a reader's letter in yesterday's Times (it's a very old fashioned organisation so they don't put their stuff online):

Mr Cameron... should look at taxing profits which stay in companies and are re-invested in markets and products differently from those that are paid in dividends and buy backs..."

Bob Bishoff, Managing Partner, SCCO International

OK, here's a crash course in calculating corporation tax for people who have better things to do than making their "clients more valuable by providing solutions to the key management issues of Strategy and Structure."

1. You calculate the company's profits under normal accounting rules.

2. In arriving at the company's profits under normal accounting rules you DEDUCT amounts that are spent on market research, R&D, product development, staff training, machinery, advertising etc (unless you are an idiot and don't deduct them).

3. Therefore, by definition, that part of a company's income which is re-invested in the business is excluded from accounting profits because it's not profit - it's an expense.

4. There's then a bit of tomfoolery with add-backs and deductions, timing differences etc blah blah, which even out in the grander scheme of things to arrive at taxable profits (overall, taxable profits are much the same as accounting profits, sometimes higher, sometimes lower).

5. You multiply taxable profits by the corporation tax rate and that's your corporation tax bill.

6. Therefore, only a complete moron would accuse the government of taxing re-invested profits at too high a rate, because the government does not tax re-invested profits at all because amounts re-invested in the business do not count as profits in the first place!!

Twat points to the first person to leave a comment saying that "But a company doesn't get tax relief for money it spends on land and buildings". Firstly, if you are a tenant you get a full deduction for the rents you pay; secondly, if you buy land and buildings, you still get a tax deduction for the interest you pay on the loan; and finally although you can't claim much in the way of capital allowances any more, IBAs having been phased out, there is very little tax on the increase in value of the land and buildings, so fair's fair.

On the infinite stupidity of the UK welfare system...

From The Daily Mail:

Evicting a woman from her council home for failing to pay rent would breach her human rights, judges ruled yesterday. Town Hall chiefs wanted to evict Rebecca Powell, who receives thousands of pounds in benefits, after she ran up more than £3,500 in arrears on the accommodation she was given because she was homeless.

???

As I said over at HPC, the benefits system is stupid - because of all the to-ing and fro-ing and separate benefits and paying and clawing back by different departments - and encourages this sort of behaviour.

What's wrong with rolling all cash benefits into one payment (e.g. Citizen's Income or Universal Credit) and then deducting the council rent and council tax from that amount before paying over the net balance? That way it would be impossible for welfare claimants to run up arrears*.

Anecdotal: I was once tidying up a flat after the tenants had left and there were two envelopes from the council. One was a cheque from the Housing Benefit department for the rent; the other was a red reminder for unpaid Council Tax. The cheque and the demand were for similar amounts and we can safely assume that the tenants banked the former and ignored the latter.

* And instead of having means-tested Housing Benefit, it'd be far simpler (and come to much the same thing mathematically, just with less admin, faff, fraud and error) to deduct the rent directly from social tenants' wages, i.e. instead of paying them HB to cover most or all of the rent and then retrospectively reducing the HB by £x for every £100 they have earned (and at which stage they might be out of work again and so don't have the money to make up the difference), just let them live there for free and give them a PAYE code which tells the employer to deduct an additional x% from their wages. Hey ho, no more poverty trap.