Carry Bag Tax

I'm already irritated by this tax. It's everything I hate about the worst aspects of Guardian Ecosocialism. If it was simply a case of taxing the pollution and landfill, I might have less of a problem. Work out the cost, stick it on the bag production companies and off you go. But it's not that. It's that you, the consumer have to pay the 5p. It's not based around a view of people of adults, where you pay for your decisions, but a nanny state view of people as children who need to make the right choices, and be guilted and punished into doing so. It's why you pay the money, and why that money in a punative sum over the actual damage caused.

Plus that's far more complicated than just collecting it when it's produced.

On top of that, I already reuse my bags. I take a couple of carrier bags to use when taking the dog out for a walk. They do the job as well as the proper "doggy poop bags". So I'm already sorting out the problem by reusing rather than buying a load of other bags.

I could go along with it and buy the pet bags. But I'm not going to. I'm going to keep getting the bags and keep handing over the money. I know it means government get the money to spend on whatever pet bullshit they want to, but the government is more interested in the public acquiescing to their bullying than handing over the money. And when this works, they'll push a bit harder next time.

Postman Pat Always Rings Twice

From Wiki and Wiki:

Postman Pat Always Rings Twice is a 1946 British computer-animated comedy film-noir based on the long-running BBC children's series of the same name by James M. Cain. This adaptation of the novel features featuring Postman Pat (voiced by Stephen Mangan and Ronan Keating), Lana Turner and John Garfield.

Pat Clifton, known as “Postman Pat”, is a friendly postman turned drifter who stops at a rural diner for a meal, and ends up working there. He wants to take a beautiful young woman, Cora Smith (Lana Turner), and her much older husband, Nick (Cecil Kellaway) on a late honeymoon to Italy.

He plans to afford it by a bonus he’s going to get from his employer, the Special Delivery Service (SDS). But Frank and Cora start to have an affair soon after they meet.

When Pat arrives at SDS Headquarters after finishing his round, Frank and Cora scheme to murder new boss Edwin Carbunkle (voiced by Peter Woodward), who has cancelled all bonuses and plans to make SDS more efficient, thinking that being friendly is a waste of time.

Their first attempt at the murder is a failure, but they eventually succeed and win the holiday to Italy, so Wilf is happy too, and all is forgiven.

"Clegg and Cable pub visit show of unity"

From the BBC:

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg and Vince Cable have put on a show of unity with a visit to a London pub.

The event, to highlight the fact that Vince is Nick's best mate and he loves him like a brother, came after Mr Cable was forced to deny fancying Mrs Clegg.

The younger of the two men caused confusion behind the bar by asking for a glass of the house white before sitting at a table in the pub, watched through the windows by bored commuters at a bus stop. The older man settled for a cup of tea with milk, noting that bitter "went straight through him".

As they left Mr Cable said they had talked about going on to a club, but Mr Clegg said they had had a "very nice drink and it was time he got back home to the wife and kids".

The rare joint appearance by the two men began with Mr Clegg taking on the wingman duties, trying to pull a barmaid while Mr Cable eyed up her better looking colleague.

Mongo World: same old, same old.

From The Daily Mash:

FIFA has promised an investigation into the successful 2026 World Cup bid by the planet Mongo.

Work on the stadia has been plagued with rumours that unions have been suppressed, worker wages withheld and the entire world is enslaved by the threat of an enormous death ray...

And so the article continues in the usual satirical vein, this was the punch line:

Documents also show that several high-ranking FIFA officials bought land in the uninhabitable Dire Marsh region before Mongo was named as host. They have since made massive profits as the lands are drained to make way for infrastructure and by selling its native lizard men as meat.

Indian Bicycle Marketing: George Osborne lets the mask slip

From sundaypost.com:

George Osborne appears to have admitted defeat on the Tory pledge to bring annual net immigration below 100,000 by the general election.

The Chancellor said progress had been made on reducing numbers, but suggested Britain's relationship with the EU would need to be renegotiated after May 2015 to deliver David Cameron's promise. He also warned that border controls will be loosened again if Labour returns to government next year...

Official figures showed net migration - the number coming to the UK for at least a year, minus the numbers leaving - rose 58,000 to 212,000 in the year to September 2013...

Righty ho, just for starters, Osborne has sort-of admitted that his party won the last election partly on the strength of them lying about getting net immigration below 100,000, having known full well that it was impossible and a meaningless target anyway: even if a government can control immigration (and they could if they wanted to) it cannot control emigration so it cannot control net immigration unless it runs a daily tab and expels recent immigration immigrants if not enough people emigrate.

And on the facts, annual net immigration has stayed pretty much constant since his lot got into government, the direct comparison with the previous year is misleading.

[Whether or not that is a desirable aim is up to the voting public to decide, and I guess that given the choice, we would vote for it: that is a separate topic.]

Anyway, building up to classic bit of Indian Bicycle Marketing:

Mr Osborne said. "So we have got our policy, we are delivering on the policy, and the key dimension to it which we need to now deliver on is the European aspect.

"That requires renegotiation of our membership of the EU, an in-out referendum so the British people have their say...

A bit like Dave's famous cast-iron guarantee of 2009, eh..?

"If there's a Labour government not only will the economy go to ruin but the borders will be uncontrolled and you won't get that renegotiation in Europe because they're not even pretending that they want to do it."

So he wants us to vote for his lot because they are at least pretending?
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Jackart comments: There has been a big fall in people coming in. There's been a big fall in people going out, which was unexpected. Failure to meet a target, despite measures taken isn't a "lie"; this is one of the most tedious tropes in today's politics.

This post was about Indian Bicycle Marketing, which is a political strategy agreed between the two largest parties, it was not a post about immigration per se.

[It could just as well have been a post about Lib Dems saying that "If you vote for us, we will reduce climate change"].

The Tory "lie" was the notion that they can control net immigration in the first place, as you say yourself, they have little control over immigration and no control over emigration, so the net figure is pretty random. Like the weather.

And you repeat the "cast iron" idiocy, as if you didn't know that promise was made (foolishly) in the context of an anticipated 2008 election pre-ratification.

Yes, I have read the original Sun article and that is what the small print said; but Dave used the words "cast iron" himself, and who's to say that his promised referendum will materialise in 2017? This is, again, couched with lots of vague conditions (i.e. "if I cannot satisfactorily renegotiate etc" leaving himself as judge and jury on whether the renegotiation was "satisfactory".)

Basically you've repeated the entire cannon of UKIP anti-politics stupidity. Are you a 'KIPper?

I joined UKIP in 2007 when there was a still a liberal-libertarian-free market wing to the party; they turned into a caricature of themselves over the years (racist, authoritarian, NIMBY, Home-Onwer-Ist etc) and so I left a couple of years ago and joined YPP. It's only a question of time before UKIP themselves start doing Indian Bicycle Marketing.

"BBC staff complain of 'trend of filth and human waste' broadcast from new £1bn HQ"

From The Evening Standard:

BBC newsreaders have complained that output from the corporation’s flagship £1 billion building is unclean and dangerous with a 'trend of filth and human waste products'. They have called on bosses to intervene over content which they say is so 'unhygienic' that viewers regularly become sick.

The claims were made by BBC World News presenter Peter Dobbie in an email sent to the head of HR for BBC News, Dan Goad. In the email Mr Dobbie claims viewers were hospitalised after watching programmes edited in basement studio B3, complaining other licence payers have also become ill.

He writes: “They’ve had ‘food poisoning’ three times now in the past year from B3. There is now obviously a trend down there – a trend of filth, human waste products, and badly made programmes.

“Whatever is happening on B3 is vicious, adaptable and life-threatening.”

[Disclaimer: I quite like the BBC actually, it's quite funny in its own self-absorbed seriousness, but they asked for it this time.]

The Edge Of The Day After Tomorrow Never Dies

From imdb, imdb and imdb:

An alien race has hit the Earth in an unrelenting assault as a palæoclimatologist named Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) is in Antartica, on a mission which includes a media tycoon, his former lover and a Chinese agent.

He discovers that a huge ice sheet has sheared off, unbeatable by any military unit in the world. Major Elliott Carver (Cruise) is an officer who has never seen a day of combat and wants to complete his global media empire, but what he does not know is that this event will trigger a massive climate shift that will affect the world population.

When he is unceremoniously dropped into what amounts to a suicide mission, his son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) is with friends in New York to attend an event. In order for this to work, he must achieve broadcasting rights in China.

Killed within minutes, Carver now discovers that it has been raining non-stop for the past 3 weeks, and inexplicably wants to start up World War III by starting a confrontation over British and Chinese waters.

Thrown into a time loop-forcing him to live out the same series of weather-related disasters over the world over and over, James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) gains the help of Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh) on his quest to stop him, while everybody realizes the world is entering a new Ice Age, fighting and dying again... and again.

Carver and Special Forces warrior Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) are also stuck in New York and manage to survive not only a massive wave but also the fight with the aliens.

With each battle, the world population begins trying to evacuate to the warmer climates of the south. Carver becomes able to engage the adversaries with a daring attempt to rescue his son and his friends, how will Bond feel when he meets up with his former lover Rita, who is now Carver's wife?

"Frankly my dear, Tourhett Butler has the best put-down"

From The Daily Mail, an old VIZ joke:

Gone With The Wind author Margaret Mitchell has been crowned the queen of the literary put-down in a new survey.

The writer, whose novel inspired the classic film starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, topped a poll which included Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen and William Shakespeare.

The line in question - Tourhett Butler’s 'My dear, I don’t give a damn' - which was altered in the film to the more famous 'Frankly my dear, I don’t give a fuck' picked up the most votes.

Fun Online Polls: UKIP MEPs & the FIFA World Cup

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

How many of UKIP's 24 MEP will leave the party by 2019?

None - 12 votes
1 to 3 - 20
4 to 6 - 9
7 to 9 - 8
10 to 12 - 6
13 or more - 11

The weighted average of those votes is about six MEPs (out of currently 24), which is pretty much par for UKIP's course since 1999.

We'll see.
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And lo, to the football world cup.

It strikes me that unlike other forms of entertainment, sports such as football are a huge negative sum game.

Most people who go to see a film, a concert or a play etc come away having enjoyed themselves, but with a football match, at least half the fans will be disappointed at the result; and the more teams are in a competition, the more fans will be disappointed.

It's manufactured misery AFAIAC. This is less so with tennis or golf, where spectators are less partisan and appreciate the skills of the players.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll.

"Of the 32 national teams at the FIFA World Cup, how many will end up disappointing their fans?"

Vote here or use the widget in the side bar.

Unlikely Land Value Taxers: Boris Johnson and Peter Wynne Rees

From The Evening Standard (page 29, 30 May 2014) or see here:

PENSIONERS should be able to protect the value of their property "nest egg" from inheritance tax if they downsize by moving to a smaller home, Boris Johnson believes.

The Mayor's revised draft housing strategy contains plans to encourage people aged 65 or above to move into smaller properties to free up family homes for younger Londoners…

It came as Peter Wynne Rees, the homer chief planning offer in the City of London Corporation warned that the London housing market was being fuelled by "dirty Russian money being laundered and Chinese gambling".

He told BBC London that new riverside developments in Pimlico and Vauxhall were merely "safety deposit boxes" for foreign investors and called for a "punitive tax" on empty properties.

As per usual, reducing the tax burden (including but not restricted to inheritance tax) on everything that isn't occupation of land (transactions in land are not occupation thereof, things like SDLT are bad taxes too) and collecting it as an annual tax on land values instead ticks all their boxes.

With an annual tax, the sooner an over-occupying pensioner trades down, the more tax he saves; if he downsizes sharpish, he (and his heirs) end up paying much less tax than he would have pay under current rules; those pensioners who currently have real savings and live in more modest homes end up better off anyway etc.

And where's the dividing line between "vacant" and "under-occupied"; or between "under-occupied" and "just right" or even "overcrowded"? Why not make the annual tax the same regardless of how many people live there; non- and under-occupiers will get lousy value for money and everybody else gets much better value for money, then market forces sort it out.