Tim Worstall

Jeremy Leggett tries to recover from the shotgun blasts fired at Solar PV subsidies served up by George Monbiot.

Doesn’t so all that well to be honest.

Second, Monbiot says the government’s scheme targets money where economies of scale are “impossible” – an incorrect assumption because solar electricity costs will inevitably fall to the point, within just a few years, where they are cheaper than any form of fossil fuel and nuclear electricity. Systemic economies of scale in solar manufacturing and installation techniques are causing rapid reductions in solar PV costs globally, just as Ofgem and others worry so loudly about the inevitable rise of traditional electricity costs.

How wonderful, solar will be cheaper than coal.

Great.

So, when it is we’ll all install it. No need for subsidies.

Even if you say that subsidies are required in order to get those economies of scale….it’s a global market, remember? The UK is a mere glans drop of urine in the great golden river of global subsidies. The Germans are spending huge amounts on their subsidies and that’s what is driving the prices down. We’ve no need to spend our money in the same manner.

Let them do it, wait and reap the benefits.

Great, so Jeremy puts his business into cold storage for a few years, we all save oodles of money and all is right with the world: and we can still save Gaia.

About Michael Foot. He was the son of an MP (one knighted for having been so) and his brothers all did well:

Foot’s father, Isaac Foot, was a solicitor and founder of the Plymouth law firm, Foot and Bowden (which merged with another firm to become Foot Anstey). Isaac Foot was an active member of the Liberal Party and was Liberal Member of Parliament for Bodmin in Cornwall 1922–1924 and 1929–1935 and a Lord Mayor of Plymouth.^[2]

Michael Foot’s brothers were Sir Dingle Foot MP, the Liberal politician Lord Foot (previously John Foot) and Lord Caradon (previously Hugh Foot), a Governor of Cyprus and a former representative of the United Kingdom at the United Nations from 1964-1970, whose son was the campaigning journalist Paul Foot.

I knew of the relationship with Paul Foot but not of the rest of it.

For some strange reason I had thought that Michael Foot was a great deal more proletarian than that. Now that I’ve seen that background his views rather fall into place: South West, Methodism, Liberal Party antecedents….

Welcome to the modern world Mr. Kafka!

The report said the probation system lacks the resources to deal with the thousands of prisoners on Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection (IPP), who now make up one in fifteen of the total prison population.

Indeterminate sentences were introduced in 2005 for the most dangerous offenders.

In theory they would not be released until they had completed courses aimed at reforming them and proved they were safe to be back in society.

We’ve a modern twist!

We’ll tell you what the crime was these days, even try you for it. But once found guilty, we won’t tell you how long you’re going to be locked up for!

In fact, we’ll tell you that you will be locked up until you’ve gone through various treatments and counselling sessions.

Then we’ll not give you any treatment or counselling sessions!

Ain’t that cute?

To be honest with you I cannot see why this isn’t the most horrendous breach of civil rights. Locked up, the duration being at the pleasure of the bureaucracy?

I’m a big fan of asking “and then?”

You know, someone comes up with a bright idea to make the world a better place and all too often no one’s asking, well, yes, but what happens after that? What will follow? And then?

But under an amendment to the Equality Bill tabled in the House of Lords by Lord Alli, a homosexual Labour peer, the ban on the events taking place on religious premises will be lifted.

The amendment states that national faith groups will not be forced to carry out civil partnerships.

But it is feared that same-sex couples would be able to use the protection from discrimination guaranteed – under the Equality Bill or the Human Rights Act – to take legal action against individual clergy in their parish if they refuse to “marry” them in a local church.

No, I don’t know whether this will indeed happen but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least. For we do have a ban on discrimination in the provision of goods and services on the grounds of how you get your rocks off.

It’s entirely possible that, with the law as complex as it is, the law allowing civil partnerships in Church if the Church so agrees, will become the Church must offer such.

Which isn’t, as I recall it, quite what people who supported the amendment were saying on Monday would happen.

Much as people don’t believe it a life sentence does in fact mean that. Murder someone and you might only serve a few years, this is true, but the life sentence ios always there in the background.

Breach the licence conditions and you’ll be back in jail, no trial, no court and no lawyer to save you:

Venables, who was 10 at the time of the attack, was released in 2001 but was recalled to jail last month for breaching the conditions of his parole…….The Justice Secretary and the Home Secretary appeared in dispute over the case of Jon Venables, who was recalled to prison for a probation breach nine years after the Parole Board decided he was no longer a threat.

Maybe this is right and maybe this is wrong, that’s another matter, but it just isn’t true that the average sentence for murder is the 11 years (or whatever it is) that is served on average. The average time served might be, but the sentence is screw up in any manner we don’t like and you’ll be back in again to serve the rest of that life sentence.

Meanwhile taxi drivers stayed off the job for a second day, protesting changes that would oblige them to issue receipts, keep account books and pay tax according to their income.

Almost as good as the bus drivers’ strike here in Portugal a few years back. Changes in the drink driving laws would have meant they could not have a glass of wine with their lunch. Thus the strike.

Govt backed down too….

If anyone’s at a loose end tonight would they fancy going along to the House of Commons? There’s an interesting question that should be asked.

R. Murphy Esq will be speaking:

I am speaking at a meeting tonight in the House of Commons organised by the University and Colleges Union.

The aim is to abolish university fees and make big bad business pay for universities. The basis of the plan is here:

A report released today by UCU recommends raising the level of corporation tax in the UK to the G7 countries’ average to raise enough money to abolish all university tuition fees.

It’s going to be extraordinarily interesting to see Ritchie arguing for lower corporation tax, that’s for sure.

For of course the level of corporation tax is not the same as the marginal rate of corporation tax. There’s waaaay to much to be argued over allowances, depreciation, the tax base itself and so on. The best way of cutting through that Gordian knot is by measuring the corporation tax collected as a percentage of GDP. That’s how we can measure the level taking account of all such things.

Here’s the OECD report.

You will note that the UK collects more of GDP in corporate taxation than the OECD average, the EU 19 average and the EU 15 average.

In fact, if you do the simple average for the G 7 countries, it is 3.5% or thereabouts while the UK  is at 4%.

Thus if we are to get the level of corporate taxation to the G7 average then we should lighten it by 12.5%.

Hey, sounds good to me.

Added, of course, to the joy of seeing Ritchie argue for a reduction in tax levels there’s a further point. The academics who have thought this up believe that such a lowering will increase revenue collected. Clearly they believe we’re to the right of the maximum revenue point of the Laffer Curve then.

God it’s good to see someone writing this sort of stuff.

Hedge funds are currently boosting the prices of Greek government bonds as they close out old CDS contracts.

Not, as many screaming ignorantly are saying, lowering prices by speculating against the bonds.

Via Richard.

No, they didn’t did they?

Sustainable Cities: Options for Responding to Climate cHange Impacts and Outcomes (SCORCHIO)

Yes, they did.

Just a little thing:

With basic pay of £19,000 a year, Ms Parks can expect to take home £2,000 a month once allowances for overnight stays and antisocial hours are taken into account.

Those allowances for overnight stays aren’t the hotel bills you understand: they’re the cash paid to compensate for having to stay in a hotel.

But 24,000 a year take home is pretty good money you know. Well above median wage. Not going to try and do the calculation but over £30 k pre tax certainly, maybe over £35 k. Top 25% of the wage distribution?

Why should this be shocking?

The party’s deputy chairman shocked colleagues when he revealed that he had not paid tax on his overseas fortune since becoming a member of the House of Lords a decade ago.

Nobody pays tax on their fortune because we do not have wealth taxation in this country, we have income taxation.

Further, we have income taxation on income that you actually take. Say you own a company which then owns other companies (not unusual for a rich man really). That master company gets income from those more junior companies. Through dividends, interest of capital gains.

As long as you don’t take that money out of the master company no personal taxation is due*.

Are we really to assume that all of the journalists following this don’t understand these simple points?

* It’s a little more complicated than that yes, but not that much.

BBC presenters earning more than the Prime Minister will be “named and shamed” within weeks if David Cameron wins the general election.

What is the obsession with what the Prime Minister earns? There’s an element of falling into the Statist trap here.n What the PM earns and the relationship between that and the earnings of others is only important if we already swallow the concept that politics, politicians, the State, is of over riding importance.

If we, however, have the correct view of politics, that it’s simply a method of selecting who will organise the scut work of society, then who earns more than the PM is of no more import than who earns more than the dustman.

Both absolutely essential jobs, yes, someone has to do them to keep the show on the road. But the idea that those more productive, more useful to society, should earn the same as a dustman never even crosses our mind. So why should it with the PM?

Julian Cook, an economist at Madeley-Finnegan, said: “Lord Ashcroft is one of around 60 million people in Britain who want to pay less tax.

“He does this by hiring an accountant who reduces his tax bill by as much as is legally possible, sends him an invoice and then everyone goes about their day. As you can see it’s all incredibly evil.”

George Monbiot is sensible.

The people who sell solar photovoltaic (PV) panels and micro wind turbines in the UK insist they represent a good investment. The arguments I have had with them have been long and bitter. But the debate has now been brought to an end with the publication of the government’s table of tariffs: the rewards people will receive for installing different kinds of generators. The government wants everyone to get the same rate of return. So while the electricity you might generate from large wind turbines and hydro plants will earn you 4.5p per kilowatt hour, mini wind turbines get 34p, and solar panels 41p. In other words, the government acknowledges that micro wind and solar PV in the UK are between seven and nine times less cost-effective than the alternatives.

He’s against this nonsense of course. (Did I really just say “of course”?).

The thing that makes this a red letter day is that he’s actually agreeing with us dastardly neo-liberals over at the ASI:

Aaaargh! No! Our aim is not to subsidise all and every attempt to generate electricity locally. It’s to find out which is the best method of generating electricity locally! Thus whatever the subsidy is it should be uniform. So that those who generate at the lowest cost get the highest profit, leading to more installation of this lowest cost method.

For example, if medium scale hydro requires 4.5 p (per whatever unit) of subsidy and solar PV requires 41 p to make a 5-8% return then we absolutely do not want to be doling out 41 p to all those with solar cells. We want people to go build medium scale hydro instead. Perhaps the subsidy should be 4.5 p so that only hydro gets built, or 41p so that those building hydro make huge profits and thus resources flood into the most efficient method of doing this.

But to say to the solar PV folks, yes, we know your technology is wildly useless but here have lots of money anyway, so that resources are ploughed into this wildly useless technology, is simply nonsense.

Something of a turn up for the books really…..

Jesse Jackson backs Robin Hood tax

Jesse Jackson on money is like Robert Mugabe on property rights or the Emperor Bokassa on who we should have for dinner.

His support for a position is sufficient evidence to reject said position.

Dressed in a black lace leotard, black patent heels and a huge black floral hat, the outspoken Poker Face singer said she chooses to be celibate because she does not have time for a relationship.

”I, for myself, make the choice to be single at this point in my life because I don’t have the time to get to know anybody. And you know what? It’s OK. Even Lady Gaga can be celibate,” she said smiling as she promoted her new MAC Viva Glam lipstick with 80s singer Cyndi Lauper in London.

The 23-year-old. whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, disclosed she prefers to take the time to get to know her partner before going to bed with them.

Celibate means now “no current boyfriend” does it? “Not currently getting any” as opposed to “never getting any”?

A robot capable of automatically sorting rubbish into six categories of recycled waste using laser detectors has been developed by scientists in Japan.

Excellent. Stick a few of those in the municipal dump and we can return to throwing our rubbish away in single sacks.

As I’ve shouted about several times before, the time spent sorting waste in the home costs us more than the rest of the waste disposal system put together.

Of course, we won’t all be worshipping Gaia in a compulsory manner but that’s only a problem for the more insane of Greens.

Cocaine use is up:

His letter cites recent British Crime Survey statistics showing that 6.6 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds used cocaine last year, compared to 1.3 per cent in 1996.

Thus:

The professor wrote: ”Cocaine is a very harmful drug to individuals and more broadly society and evidence of the continued increasing prevalence of cocaine use is deeply concerning.”

Umm, if coke snorting has gone up by a factor of four then we should be seeing the damge done by the use of this “very harmful drug” up by a factor of four.

Do we?

No.

Therefore it is not a “very harmful drug” is it?

see more

At the ASI.

Why State owned banks are a very bad idea indeed.