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".
We could debate exactly when the onset of the 'Global Financial Crisis' actually was, but let's just all agree it started in 2007, making this year the 10th anniversary. So have we had a 'lost decade'? Exhibit A is a 10 year chart, but who can guess what the Y axis represents?
The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:
Which theory better explains the high rotational speed of stars in the outer arms of a galaxy?
Existing gravitional theory plus dark matter - 11 votes
Erik Verlinde's Modified Newtonian Dynamics aka Entropic Gravity - 21 votes
Ed P threw a curve ball, with Derek seconding, pointing out that there is another explanation of gravity. I don't have the faintest understanding of the two alternative theories, even gravity itself is a mystery to me - how objects light years a apart can attract each other, what keeps us glued to the earth's surface and so on - but the whole 'Dark matter' concept seems like a bit of a fudge to me, and the two alternative theories seem to be able to predict what actually happens quite accurately without it. Whether 'predicting' is the the same as 'understanding' is a philosophical point. There again, they might be complete hokum…
---------------------------------------
This week's Fun Online Poll was suggested by Ralph Musgrave:
Who is most in thrall to group think?
Multiple selections allowed, vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.
Somebody alerted me to this drivel at the Adam Smith Institute (but I can't find the email any more, thanks anyway):
Thankfully the situation is much better now, but in some ways we still have the worst of both worlds in housing policy. You might imagine that housing policy aims at balancing out two concerns: quality and quantity/price.
You might think policy picks one spot along a line: at one end we guarantee very high standards in design, materials, space, and amenity, but prices are high; and at the other we allow lower quality housing to proliferate, meaning prices are low.
In fact we have managed to create a planning system that builds mostly ugly, unpopular housing in inconsistent and unpredictable ways, mostly where it's least needed, and builds so little of it that prices in growing cities are staggering.
He is making two opposite assumptions and completely ignoring the real world:
1. That an increase in supply of housing = lower prices
2. That an increase in the quality of housing = higher prices.
Truth is, rents and house prices are set by what people are willing and able to pay to live at any particular location. Construction costs have more or less nothing to do with it.
To show why his two assumptions cancel out, let's assume that higher quality means larger homes. Let's imagine every home had been built with one more room that it actually is, or that all rooms were a bit bigger, so two kids can share a bedroom comfortably, there's space for a guest bed in the sitting room, the kitchen's big enough to have some friends round etc.
It would be quite easy to have done this without using any additional land by building up a little bit higher, using loft space etc, so location values are barely affected. The additional construction cost would have been amortised and paid off years ago. But the quality of housing (as crudely measured by size) has increased.
1. That is clearly an increase in the supply of housing. There is more space available. Applying his logic, prices would fall.
2. Each individual home is now more desirable, better quality and cost a few thousand pounds more to build at some stage in the past. Applying his logic, prices would be higher.
It can't be both can it? So one or both of his assumptions is incorrect.
IMHO both are incorrect. What would happen is that there would be a net movement of people from lower to higher value areas, pushing down prices in lower value areas and pushing them even higher in higher value areas.
Emailed in by Chrome Man from the Manchester Evening News:
A lawyer who feels she has no choice but to sell her home over plans to build a railway beneath it has launched a petition against HS2...
There is one fairly obvious alternative to selling her home i.e. not selling her home. As she can sell her home, there are people willing to acquire it and continue using it as a home.
A 7.9 mile, 45m deep tunnel will be dug from Wythenshawe to Ardwick as part of the £56bn project...
So a heck of a lot of money will be spent on minimising the impact of HS2, and our lawyer is one of the many home owners who will benefit from that.
But Hamida Khatun, 38, first realised the HS2 track was routed below her home when the M.E.N reported on it. Despite government assurances residents won’t feel the effects, Hamida’s horrified...
The tunnel is going to be a staggering 45m down, you will not feel anything at ground level.
... and believes a ‘legacy’ to her children has been destroyed.
It's a bog standard house.
And although she could apply for compensation under HS2’s ‘Need to Sell’ scheme, she knows - and HS2 Ltd has confirmed - that success would be unlikely.
The tunnel will be 45m down. A lot of homeowners will benefit from the improved transport link (or that's the intention, at least) and some will benefit more than other. Perhaps it is true that the tunnel will shave a few quid off the value of her 'legacy' but overall, the increase in value because of HS2 will far outweigh it. And why is it that people demand compensation if something happens which depresses the value of their home but won't countenance the idea of paying a bit more tax if something happens which increases the value of their house?
The mum of two, of Reynell Road, Longsight , said: “When I bought this house 15 years ago and then slowly added value...
Slowly watched it go up in price along with house prices generally, more like, for no effort on her part.
"I thought I would leave it to my kids to pay off their debt..."
What debt? What has that got to do with anything?
"I could have moved to London but I made a sacrifice to live in this community..."
Condescending cow.
"My friends and family are here..."
Ah, perhaps that's why she stayed in Manchester.
"... and now HS2 are [sic] forcing people to change their way of life."
How? It's a house, for people to live in.
“If I can find a buyer, I will, because we don’t feel able to leave this for the kids to help their future."
Why not? It's a house etc.What will the new owner do differently?
Hamida and husband Jamal, 40, bought the house for £45,000 in 2002 but after investing heavily it was worth £150,000 at its last valuation.
The bulk of that increase is down to normal house price inflation and has naff all to do with any improvements they might have paid for. And if she sells it, she will get considerably more than £45,000 plus a few quid for new carpets or whatever.
They had planned to buy a second house while holding on to their Longsight property as an investment for daughters Zara, eight, and Liza, 12.
Aha. She doesn't even need the house and they can afford to buy another one.
Residents living under the tunnel are only entitled to a £50 payment for their subsoil plus £250 to seek advice.
'Under' the tunnel?
Other than that, they can apply for Government cash with the ‘Need to Sell’ scheme, but applicants must first prove their own attempts to sell have been dashed by HS2.
They don't need to sell, end of.
Alternatively, if their home is damaged during construction, they can claim later - although HS2 say modern construction techniques mean tunnelling effects are ‘generally small and typically go unnoticed’.
Half of central London is above some tunnel or other, they dig new ones all the time and I've never heard about anything bad happening at ground level.
From the BBC:
Dentists have criticised "workplace cake culture", saying the sharing of sweet treats in the office is contributing to health problems.
The Faculty of Dental Surgery said eating cake and biscuits at work was fuelling obesity and poor oral health. Office workers were urged to cut back on sugar and opt for healthier alternatives, such as reading tatty old issues of Women's Own, Hello! or Country Life.
They showed that episode again over the holidays, all great TV and so on, but if you pay attention at the end, the co-ordinates on the satnav shows latitude 78 deg.
Wikipedia's write-up says that they reached the Magnetic North Pole, which is very close to the true/geographic North Pole (which has latitude 90 deg, obviously).
Not true, they had reached the Geomagnetic North Pole, which as the map in the previous link shows is hundreds of miles further south. They set off from Resolute, which has latitude 74 deg, which is to the north of the geomagnetic North Pole, so on the outward journey they were heading south (or south-east or south-west or whatever).
So AFAICS, epic fail.
The responses to last fortnight's Fun Online Poll were as follows:
What percentage of the 1.2 million Arabs who arrived in Germany in the last two years are in gainful employment?
1 percent - 34%
3 percent - 20%
5 percent - 13%
10 percent - 16%
25 percent - 9%
50 percent - 5%
All of them - 2%
The weighted average of those guesses is 10%, the true figure, as admitted by the German government, normally obsessed with downplaying any negatives associated with the recent mass immigration, is only 13%.
So the wisdom of crowds wins yet again! (I previously referred to an article in the Daily Mail that said the figure was only 3%, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt.)
The joke is that a couple of years ago, a lot of Germans were saying that immigration will be good for their economy because it helps ameliorate the effects of an ageing population, low birth rate and a shrinking working age population. That's all fine, provided the additional working age people are actually working, which quite clearly (in contrast to the position in the UK), they are not: they are a massive drain, even if we put social and criminal issues to one side.
------------------------------------
There was an interesting piece on BBC Radio 4 this morning about competing theories of gravity.
There's no point me trying to summarise, so please read this article before casting your vote in this week's Fun Online Poll.
Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.
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.
