Tim Worstall

Only fourth?

I demand a recount!

Still, at least I beat Sunny.

BRITAIN was condemned as a sex-obsessed “hedonistic wasteland” yesterday by an influential figure in the Roman Catholic church.

At least this woman from the nef knows her statistics:

The result: we spend more and more time at work (since 1981 two-adult households have added six hours to their combined weekly workload)

The number she uses is true: but hugely and highly misleading.

For men market working hours have decreased. For women they have increased.

This is part of the huge social revolution we’ve just gone through, where for the first time in history it has become the norm that women work outside the home. We can have a nice argument about what caused this (the pill? Feminism? the move to a service economy which doesn’t value male musculature as agriculture and manufacturing used to?) but it isn’t, per se, a bad thing: for it’s exactly the thing which allows Ruth Potts to sit in an office and ponder about working life, just as one example.

One the other hand, household working hours, home production hours, have fallen over the same period for both men and women. And they have fallen enough for women that this more than covers the increase in market working hours.

Total working hours have thus been falling for both men and women.

I don’t have the time series data for the UK but one of the Federal Reserve Banks released a paper on just this for the US:

We document that a dramatic increase in leisure time lies behind the relatively stable number of market hours worked (per working-age adult) between 1965 and 2003. Specifically, we document that leisure for men increased by 6-8 hours per week (driven by a decline in market work hours) and for women by 4-8 hours per week (driven by a decline in home production work hours). This increase in leisure corresponds to roughly an additional 5 to 10 weeks of vacation per year, assuming a 40-hour work week.

An extra working day of leisure each week! That’s really not all that bad, is it?

As the thinktanker turned motor mechanic Michael Crawford explains, before the factory line accustomed workers to abstraction – people would choose a satisfying job over a higher wage.

And as Adam Smith pointed out way back in 1776, the total wages for a job will always be equal (yes, subject to some constraints like skill levels and so on). There will be higher cash payments for dangerous jobs, for boring jobs, and lower cash payments for enjoyable jobs.

This is why Ford paid $5 a day (double the local prevailing wage) in 1913 in order to overcome that worker turnover problem, why Iain Dale offers £18,000 a year for a graduate journalist with experience in Inner London (possibly half the prevailing local wage for a graduate) and why Ruth Potts gets paid a pittance.

Nef’s 21 hours argues that the shorter working week should be the new social norm. It sets out how reducing the amount of time we spend in the office and distributing the work we have more effectively would free us to actively engage in our lives, learn new skills while also reducing inequality. Reduce the working week, and it might also give us the time to think about what we do. It’s a vital first step on the path reconnecting work with the art of living.

I’ve no problem at all with the idea of a shorter working week. For, as we can see from the above, it’s happening anyway. As we as a society get richer we seem to be taking some of that increasing wealth as leisure time. Excellent, great. Peeps are doing it for themselves, there’s no requirement for think tankers to point them in hte right direction, nor to organise it for them.

And the real and major problem with the nef proposal is that they don’t suggest a reduction in total working hours at all. They suggest rather that we reduce market, paid, working hours and increase the unpaid, household, working hours instead.

That is, they want to reverse the entire trend of recent decades, the trend we’ve chosen for ourselves, of reducing household working hours faster than market working hours.

‘Coz, you know, they know better than yow about how to create that life well lived.

Arrogant bastards aren’t they?

Social networking website Facebook is coming under unprecedented pressure from its users to switch to renewable energy. In one of the web’s fastest-growing environmental campaigns, Greenpeace international says at least 500,000 people have now protested at the organisation’s intention to run its giant new data centre mainly on electricity produced by burning coal power.

Facebook will not say how much electricity it uses to stream video, store information and connect its 500m users but industry estimates suggest that at their present rate of growth all the data centres and telecommunication networks in the world will consume about 1,963bn kilowatt hours of electricity by 2020. That is more than triple their current consumption and more electricity than is used by France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined.

Facebook announced in February that it planned to build what is expected to be the world’s largest centralised data storage centres in Portland, Oregon. Although it will include some of the world’s most energy-efficient computers, the sheer scale of the Facebook operation will almost certainly use more electricity than many developing countries.

Just wondering, but what are they expected to do?

Go build enough renewables to power their operation? To build as much generating capacity as a developing country has?

Do you know how much capital that would require? How many billions upon billions of $?

And, of course, as is still sadly true, renewables are hugely more expensive than coal fired power off the grid: if they weren’t, we wouldn’t actually have the general problem we do have, would we?

Now I know that Facebook is (currently) free at the point of use. But are those who say that they should be using electricity up to four times more expensive than coal fired willing to put their money where their mouth is? Or is it just painless posturing?

I bet Sunny will be pissed:

The leftwing blog Left Foot Forward named Hague in a blog condemning homophobic comments in Fawkes’s blog.

Now it’s possible that Left Foot Forward did the same thing but I certainly remember the Liberal Conspiracy one which did just that.

Err, no, they don’t.

FT Alphaville has lovely fun mocking AEP and his piece on thorium based reactors.

Now it’s true that AEP was a tad over the top: but nothing in his piece was wrong, even if he glossed over the odd technical difficulty. You can run a reactor on thorium, there is lot’s of it around, it would be cheap, there isn’t much waste and no, a thorium reactor cannot have a runaway meltdown.

But what elevates the FT’s misunderstanding to a truly higher level is that they compare AEP’s enthusiasm to part of a Dan Brown novel.

Gosh, tee hee, eh?

Well, we at FT Alphaville are definitely not scientists, but we can’t help feeling we have heard about this sort of particle-accelerator generated energy before.

For example:

The world’s largest scientific research facility-Switzerland’s Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN)-recently succeeded in producing the first particles of antimatter.

Antimatter is identical to physical matter except that it is composed of particles whose electric charges are opposite to those found in normal matter. Antimatter is the most powerful energy source known to man.

It releases energy with 100 percent efficiency (nuclear fission is 1.5 percent efficient). Antimatter creates no pollution or radiation, and a droplet could power New York City for a full day. There is, however, one catch . . . Antimatter is highly unstable.

It ignites when it comes in contact with absolutely anything . . . even air. A single gram of antimatter contains the energy of a 20-kiloton nuclear bomb-the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Until recently antimatter has been created only in very small amounts (a few atoms at a time).

But CERN has now broken ground on its new Antiproton Decelerator-an advanced antimatter production facility that promises to create antimatter in much larger quantities. One question looms: Will this highly volatile substance save the world, or will it be used to create the most deadly weapon ever made?

That was an extract from Dan Brown’s 2000 bestseller Angels & Demons.

Very tee hee in fact. For they’ve managed to pick the one and only piece of science from a Dan Brown novel which actually happens to be true.

Over the past 20 years scientists at CERN have been using antiparticles in many different ways for their daily work.
Antiparticles can be generated by colliding subatomic particles. Before being delivered to the various physics experiments, they must be isolated, collected and stored in order to tune their energy to the appropriate level.

Until now, each of these steps has been carried out by a dedicated machine with the main purpose of providing high energy antiparticles.

But now the first “self-contained antiproton factory”, the Antiproton Decelerator (or AD), is operational at CERN . It will produce the low energy antiprotons needed for a range of studies, including the synthesis of antihydrogen atoms – the creation of antimatter.

We are faced with a choice: act with real urgency to move away from fossil fuels and develop the clean tools that will help us completely rebuild our economic system, or carry on squeezing out the last drops and hope for the best.

It’s not actually an either or.

Using coal, oil, natural gas now, while we develop those clean tools would work just fine. Indeed, it’s the sensible thing to be doing. Wait until the clean tools are actually available, in quantity, at the right price, and then use them.

Hey, Jeremey Leggett says that solar PV will be cheaper at the point of use, even here in the UK, than fossil and grid derived power by 2013.

Not long to wait then, eh?

However, I suspect that the really important part of that is the “completely rebuild our economic system”. Greenpeace would be utterly distraught if anyone really did come up with a non or low carbon form of energy generation that allowed free market capitalism to continue making life better for all.

Which is why they’re going to be so pissed off in a decade or two when exactly that happens.

Over at CiF we’ve got someone telling us what “indigenous” means.

As with most such things, it’s difficult to offer perfect definitions … however the term is generally used to describe the original inhabitants of a territory prior to its colonization during the last 500 years or so. You see, a lot of the world (all of the Americas, all of Africa, all of Australasia and Oceania, etc.) have been conquered and ruled by Europeans at some point during the last few centuries. This process resulted in the death, displacement and marginalization of many of these conquered peoples. Even after these countries gained independence from the European powers, the original inhabitants still remained within a marginal social and economic position. Thus Quechua-speakers in Peru are often poorer and politically weaker than Spanish-speakers and people of a European ancestry.

These people are what is meant when we talk about the “indigenous” peoples of the world. It therefore doesn’t apply to Britain because it relates specifically to the experience of having been colonized, which did not happen to Britain or its people.

My response:

He’s got this “100 months” project going. A piece a month at CiF telling us all how we’ve only got 100, 99, 98 months to go before DOOM. 25 months in and it’s fair to say that he’s finding it difficult to say anything interesting.

However, a little bit of advice:

Yet, we are perhaps further from holding back the warming tide than when we began to count down the months…

Err, so if writing the articles leads to things getting worse, why not stop writing the articles?

So, one tiny part of that vast amorphous grouping, the Tea Party, has some strange ideas about God, creationism, AGW and so on. My comment left over where Hickman has revealed this shocking news:

So, lessee, the Tea Party Movement is hugely varied. Absolutely anyone can up and say “we’re Tea Party!”.

And we’ve found one very minor part of it that has what we might think are laughable ideas about AGW and or God/creationism and Ollie North.

Gosh, well done.

Now, let us try this again in the UK. Absolutely anyone can stand up and say “We’re the Left!” and many groupuscules do. I’m sure we can hunt around and find some group or other that calls for the elimination of the bourgeoisie.

Does that entitle us to then claim that the Labour Party intend to kill off the middle classes, as Lenin and Stalin did?

They’re both “the left”, the groupuscule and the Labour Party, so we are, at least as Leo has done here, entirely allowed to claim that the views of a few crackpots are the views of millions, aren’t we?

So, Pachauri should go.

For the crime of being appointed to manage a large organisation and project while not actually being a very good manager of a large organisation or project.

Seems entirely fair to me: the further up that greasy pole you go the greater the possibility that you’ll start to exhibit the Peter Principle and thus the greater the likelihood of your being hoicked off said greasy pole.

However, it’s Geoffrey Lean telling me this. And a useful guide to the world is that Mr. Lean is always wrong. No, the stopped clock analogy does not work here (or rather, never has before) so I am somewhat conflicted.

From Lean’s statement Pachauri is clearly the best manager in the world and should be appointed global emperor immediately. Observation of the real world says that he’s a terrible manager and should be sacked.

What are we supposed to do when hard won wisdom, gained through years of experience, conflicts with reality? Do I go with the wisdom and do exactly the opposite of whatever it is that Lean proposes or do I have to take note of reality and support Pachauri’s firing?

I was trying to figure out why they were paying them and then:

Insiders denied that the September bonus round had been planned all along in a bid to avoid paying extra taxes.

Ah, yes, the special 50% bonus tax was a “one off” wasn’t it? Applies only to bonuses paid before April 5th this year.

Now, we all know that “one off” can become a series of “one offs”: this is why we’re still paying income tax to defeat Napoleon.

However, if the Treasury is going to try and impose such a tax again this year then CS has beaten them to the punch. For of course, (well, at least if the Treasury is going to try and maintain any relationship at all with the spirit of the law) and tax imposed in this financial year will only apply to bonuses paid after the announcement of the tax and before the end of the tax year.

Be interesting to see what you know who says about it.

In direct response to the claims made on Guido Fawkes’s website, a spokesman for Mr Hague said: “Any suggestion that the Foreign Secretary’s relationship with Chris Myers is anything other than a purely professional one is wholly inaccurate and unfounded.”

There are different meanings of the word “professional” of course.

So, the Koch brothers fund various people because as rich men they spend their money trying to make the world a better place as they see it.

It might not be a better world as you see it, that’s for sure, but they are spending their money as they think it will. The money comes from various foundations they have set up.

Ritchie:

These people want to destroy democratic politics as we know it……..They deny our right to think for ourselves……..They want to destroy our rights to choose……But they pave the way for much worse. And big money funds this. Daily. And I am sure it funds those who promote this vicious creed. And that’s what we have to oppose. Because such groups set out to destroy all we value. They do so with a low profile. From tax havens. Behind fronts. And they do so with a mixture of respectable activity. But the aim is to destroy our democracies none the less. This is the challenge we face. Wake up and smell the coffee. This is what’s out there. And it’s spreading, like a cancer.

Amazingly, absolutely none of this applies to Richard, the Tax Justice Network or any other of his friends and front organisations who are funded by the Ford Foundation, the Joseph Rowntree Trust, the TUC, PCS……

No doubt it’s because their hearts are pure that living off rich men’s grants does not, in any way, affect their published musings.

That, for example, a report funded by PCS, the union representing most tax officers, recommends that the government stop firing tax officers. No, no, how could you think that there might be a link?

In B&Q they cost 20p. So why does the NHS spend £99 for a screw to put in your hip?

The ones at B&Q are steel, have wide tolerances and are not sterile.

The NHS buys screws that are titanium, with narrow tolerances and sterile.

As the article itself says:

We sell screws that are barely any different from the ones you see in B&Q, priced five for £1. Yet ours cost between £30 and £40 — each. And while they cost us, at most, £10 to make, we justify the mark-up because they are slightly finer. Oh, and sterile.

60-75% gross profit margin on a manufactured item is nothing out of the ordinary now, is it?

At the ASI.

Not as much of a change in his views as people seem to be saying.

The world economy, which was growing at about 3% in per capita terms in the “bad old days” of widespread regulation and punitive taxation for the rich in the 1960s and 70s, has grown at about half that rate in the last three decades.

Hmm.

Taking a quick look at Angus Maddison’s figures that doesn’t seem to be true.

So what else are we to be told that isn’t true to bolster the case for those clever people to tell us all what to do rather than us being allowed to decide what to do for ourselves?

Dennis MacShane really is a one, isn’t he?

David Cameron and Nick Clegg stand accused of sending the “wrong signal” to pimps and human traffickers across the world after the coalition decided against endorsing an EU directive designed to co-ordinate European efforts to combat the trade in sex slaves.

As new figures show that fewer traffickers are being jailed than at any time in the last five years, Labour called for a government rethink on the directive, appealing to the pro-European Liberal Democrats to explain to their coalition partners the benefits of EU action.

Denis MacShane, Labour’s former Europe minister, launched the appeal after the government decided not to sign up to the directive. The document includes a common definition of the crime of trafficking, to make it easier to convict offenders in the EU’s 27 member states.

Absence of successful prosecution is taken to be proof that not enough is being done.

Only five people were convicted of human trafficking for sexual exploitation in the first six months of this year, according to figures from the UK Human Trafficking Centre, compared with 33 and 34 in the previous two 12-month periods. A further nine were convicted of other offences, having been arrested on suspicion of trafficking.

The alternative, that the low number of successful prosecutions means that not many are committing the crime seems not to be even considered.

For example, we don’t take the low number of High Treason prosecutions as being evidence that we must change the definition of High Treason. Rather, we take it as evidence that not many people are committing High Treason.

And yes, MacShane’s partner is indeed one of the loopier campaigners on this point, almost as bad as Julie Bindel.

The Reverend Robin Roe.

Irishman, Church of Ireland priest, British military chaplain, MC, Ireland and British Lions rugby international (plus Barbarians, London Irish etc).

Rugby led directly to his Army duties as, when England played Ireland at Twickenham in 1952, Roe was one of two novice priests – both Protestants – in the Irish team. The other, Canon “Gerry” Murphy (now chaplain to the Queen at Sandringham), had done military service and encouraged his team-mate to do the same.

OK,  so toll road may or may not be of value.

So, how do we try and work out whether it is of value?

In the spring of 2006 it attracted just under 60,000 drivers a day. By the start of this year, the figure had fallen to just over 40,000, marginally more than when the toll opened.

Those who are willing to pay can enjoy a far quicker journey during the rush hour, especially when travelling southbound when using the relief road takes around 40 minutes – about half the time needed on the M6.

But at other times the time saving is marginal – in many cases little more than five minutes. This, the Campaign says, means the toll is poor value for the motorists.

Well, we could use whatever measure the Campaign for Better Transport is using, this is true. They don’t think that saving between 40 and 5 minutes is worth £5. Fine, that’s their view.

However, we don’t actually run the country on the valuations of the Campaign for Better Transport. We try, as hard as we can, to run the country on the valuations of us, the hoi polloi, the citizenry.

And it would appear that 40,000 people a day do think that a saving of 40 minutes to 5 minutes is worth £5. Which means that whatever the Campaign for Better Transport think, it is worth it, it is of value, to those 40,000 people.

That, of course, is not the full picture. For now we have to try and find out whether the provision of the infrastucture is worth the value that it provides to those 40,000 people. What’s the cost to put against that £200,000 a day of value?

No, I’ve no idea what the toll road cost to build. But we have one thing we can look at:

Macquarie who built the toll described it as one of the jewels in the crown.

That would at least indicate that the people who built and run it are making a profit: that the income they get from selling what people are happy to pay for is higher than the cost of providing what people are happy to pay for.

We thus have added value.

The people using the road are gaining more value, which we can measure by their willingness to pay for it, than it cost to provide what those users are valuing.

So, the toll road is “worth it”, whatever the Campaign for Better Transport say about it.

For, you see, value is not what is defined by the Campaign for Better Transport. Value is, instead, what we ourselves decide is valuable, we peasantry as we spend our hard earned spondoolies.

So the rail unions, who part fund the Campaign for Better Transport, can fuck off quite frankly.