Disneyland Paris - Day One

Yeah, but why are the other half bullied?

The article in The Metro sheds no light on this.

"Greater Manchester considers minimum price for alcohol"

From the BBC:

... some fear it could lead to people going to neighbouring counties to buy cheap alcohol in bulk."

Well, duh.

And who's this bunch of shysters...

Andy Walker, of wellbeing and health organisation Our Life, said he hoped a by-law in Greater Manchester would be passed and create a "domino effect" nationally.?

I'd never heard of them before. From their website:

We passionately believe that people have a fundamental right to better wellbeing and health. We also think that local citizens and local communities should have more say over the decisions that affect their lifestyle choices.

But what if 'local citizens and local communities... have their say' and decide they don't want minimum alcohol pricing? Have you even considered that possibility, Mr Walker?

PS, the website looks distinctly fakecharity, but it does not mention a charity number, neither does it have a companies house number (so it is not necessarily a fakeprivatecompany either). Apparently, it was " Set up in 2009 as an independent, campaigning social enterprise by NHS North West, Our Life is a membership organisation..." so I assume it's basically a lobbying front for somebody or other or a slush fund or something.

NIMBYs Of The Week

From S(t)ourbridge News:

Angry resident Caroline Howard said: “The villagers are in uproar. It’s such a stupid place to put affordable houses. We’re not saying we don’t want affordable housing. It’s not nimbyism, it’s the location. It’s absolutely ludicrous. It’s obvious that lane is dangerous now. How do they think they’re going to have more families with cars going down there? We will do everything we can to let people know the majority of residents in Clent* don’t want it there.”

Resident Jane Whallett said: “The Pleck is a local beauty spot that should be protected, not destroyed. The woodland is home to badgers, grass snakes, hedgehogs, bats, owls, as well as buzzards and other smaller birds. It also has a tree preservation order on it.”

Etcetera, etcetera, you get the gist. Just as background, here's the satellite view of Clent from Google Maps:

* The irony being, if they build the promised dozen houses, a majority of 'Clent residents' will probably be living in them.

Fun Online Polls: AV and the value of stuff

Ho hum. There was a disappointing result - from my point of view - in last week's Fun Online Poll:

Do you want the UK to adopt the 'alternative vote' system instead of 'first past the post' for electing MPs?
Yes - 32%
No - 68%

I just don't see the problem - provided you are not forced to use all your votes, then those people who are accustomed to just putting one cross (or only like one candidate) can just their first vote - what have they lost?
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This week's Fun Online Poll is a wider philosophical/economics question:

People value things more highly and use them more efficiently if...
... they have to work hard and put money aside to pay for them.
... they are 'free'; subsidised by the taxpayer; or bought with easy credit.

This applies to obvious things like 'free' NHS treatment or 'free' state education, but IMHO the same applies to land and buildings.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

If we're allowed to say 'fat' instead of 'obese'...

... then which adjective would we use to describe this quangocrat?

Highlight from the article:

In 2003 she was criticised for saying there 'was not a shred of evidence' that the Atkins diet –which urges followers to cut out carbohydrates such as bread – worked. It was later revealed that MRC research into the topic was partially funded by the flour industry.

Elephants, rooms (2)

Further to my previous post, from the BBC:

... Mr Osborne said the government "will not tolerate banks piling the pressure" on small firms struggling for credit. "Every small and medium-sized company that I have visited in recent weeks has had some problem with their bank - either they have found it difficult to renew their overdraft or they demanded additional collateral, often someone's house," he said.

"The danger is that, particularly next year, when there is a huge amount of refinancing required, that the small and medium-sized businesses suffer from a lack of access to working capital."

Can you see where they're going with this?

The government is working on good excuses to do an 'extend and pretend' job and to allow UK banks to defer repayment of the hundreds of billions of pounds of taxpayer-backed soft loans and guarantees for another couple of years.

Not in order to keep the house price bubble inflated, y'understand, oh no, nothing as cynical as that, but to 'help small and medium-sized businesses, which are the lifeblood of the UK economy etc etc'.

FFS, if the Chancellor wanted 'small and medium-sized businesses' to have more money, he could cut out the middleman and just reduce their tax burden (and red tape), couldn't he?

Elephants, rooms.

From an article in the City AM:

BANKS will come under renewed pressure to extend credit to small businesses this week as the UK's five largest lenders reveal combined pre-tax profits of nearly £12bn. With the stronger players returning to pre-financial crisis levels of success, a fresh row is brewing between politicians – who are demanding more finance for enterprises – and bank executives, who say they need to build up their capital positions.

In a remarkable bounce-back from the lows of the financial crisis, state-owned Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland are expected to report a return to profitability for the first half of the year.

Most of those lovely profits because of the soft government loans and guarantees and taxpayer funded bail outs generally (I'll exclude HSBC from that generalisation), as well as the Labour government's relatively successful attempts to keep the house price bubble inflated to prevent further loan write downs, of course. But you'd hardly expect either banks or politicians to admit it in public.

The BBA veer dangerously close to the truth at the end of the article:

The British Bankers' Association immediately hit back. Chief executive Angela Knight said: "There are funds available to lend to firms with a viable business plan. But the industry's ability to support the economy needs to be considered as the increased capital and cash we are required to hold cannot both be set aside and used to finance lending."

Of course, what she daren't say too loud in public is that UK banks are due to repay up to £400 billion in loans and guarantees to the UK government over the next couple of years, with as much again in short term finance falling due for repayment or refinancing in the next eighteen months. And that is a heck of a lot of money, i.e. about half of all loans secured on UK land and buildings.

European Athletics Championship Fun

Or was the lady on the right an illegal entrant in the 400 metres hopping event at the Paralympics?

Blue Socialism

From The Daily Mail:

Doom-mongers who are predicting a 'double dip' in house prices have got it wrong, experts said today. The Centre For Economics And Business Research (CEBR) said prices will increase 4 per cent this year and continue rising until 2014, mainly due to a shortage of homes in the UK and low interest rates...

It's Blue Socialism writ large, isn't it?

Q: Who restricts the supply of (new) homes and ensures that owners of vacant or derelict sites are not encouraged to develop them?
A: The government (acting under pressure from local NIMBYs).

Q: Who is rigging the banking system so that interest rates stay low?
A: The government (acting under pressure from 'hard pressed homeowners').

Q: Does this increase the rewards for risk-taking, effort and enterprise, or does this merely reward the largest group of vested interests?
A: The latter.

Q: Does any of this have anything to do with small government, free market liberalism?
A: Nope.