Who Will Light The Olympic Flame ?

Any suggestions ?

female 1/2 on
male evens
woman in hijab 3-1
disabled female athlete 4-1
ethnic minority London schoolgirl 9-1
ethnic minority London schoolboy 15-1
woman in burka 16-1
Fabrice Muamba 20-1 (Coral are currently offering 66-1 - a snip)
celebrity chef 25-1
Gok Wan 25-1
mother of victim of racist murder (minority) 30-1
British soldier (disabled, minority) 50-1
victim of 7/7 bombing (minority) 100-1
victim of 7/7 bombing (white) 200-1
British soldier (disabled, white) 200-1
Muhammad Ali 250-1
Gazza 250-1
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown 250-1
able-bodied heterosexual white male 250-1
British soldier (minority) 300-1
British soldier (white) 400-1
Julie Bindel 500-1
Billy Bragg 500-1
Rose West 1000-1
Laurie Penny 1000-1
mother of victim of racist murder (white) 300,000,000-1
Sir Geoffrey Boycott 600,000,000-1

Dumb Britain

"Danger: Fiery lava is flunged tens of feet up in the air splashes down Mount Etna on the island of Sicily, Italy"

Flunged ?

But this one's quite evil.

"The big thaw: Greenland ice cover vanishes in just four days"

Greenland has a couple of miles of ice cover - miles deep. What they're reporting is that satellite data appears to show surface melting - how much is not specified - over nearly all that ice cover. If the Greenland ice cap had vanished we'd be a smaller island, as East Anglia would be submerged.

What's particularly bad is that a more measured - or better sub-edited - report the previous day, by Seith Borenstein, ran as follows :

Even Greenland's coldest place showed melting. Records show that last happened in 1889 and occurs about once every 150 years.

Nasa says three satellites saw what it calls unprecedented melting over four days beginning on 8 July. Most of the thick ice remains. But what was unusual was that the melting occurred over a widespread area.

Nasa says the melting area went from 40 per cent of the ice sheet to 97 per cent. Until now, the most extensive melt seen by satellites in the past 30 years was about 55 per cent.

Scientists cannot say yet if the melting is from global warming or natural.

One should never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity. The Mail, like the Telegraph, seems to hire illiterate subs - the Indie goes for scientific illiterates. Fair play to the Indie's commenters - they're ripping into the headline in fine style. One of them adds quotes which make it plain that either writer Steve Connor or the subs are guilty of suppressio veri as well as suggestio falsi.

"Given the decades-old ice-core evidence, "you could make the case that it's not unexpected to see it now," the University of Georgia's Mote said."

 (not that such things are any bar to a career in journalism. Previous correspondent Charles Arthur is now at the Guardian. And in the economics field, former Telegraphist Edmund Conway - the chap who thinks the offspring of the Karen Matthews' of this world are going to be paying the ageing boomers hospital bills - is now economics correspondent at Sky News.)
  

We Are All Innocent

PC Simon Harwood cleared of the manslaughter of Ian Tomlinson.

"Neither jury heard details of Harwood's prior disciplinary record, which can only be reported now. This includes how he quit the Met on health grounds in 2001 shortly before a planned disciplinary hearing into claims he illegally tried to arrest a driver after a road rage incident while off duty, altering his notes to retrospectively justify the actions. Harwood was nonetheless able to join another force, Surrey, before returning to serve with the Met in 2005.

He allegedly punched, throttled, kneed or threatened other suspects while in uniform in other alleged incidents."

Eight men cleared of deliberately running over three Muslim men in Winson Green last summer. This report from Ghana on the trial is illuminating on the racial makeup of those charged and on who was in the death car.

I don't think people are going to be too chuffed about either of these verdicts. But the unchuffedness of the Guardianista is not like unto the unchuffedness of the ummah.

If Farzana and Iftikhar Ahmed are cleared of the murder of their daughter Shafilea we'll have the hat-trick.

If That Was Your Name, Wouldn't You Want To Shoot Someone Too?

DECATUR - Three suspects who were arrested last week in connection with the shooting death of 24-year-old Billy J. Rutherford were each charged Thursday with three counts of first-degree murder.
Documents released by the Macon County State's Attorney's Office after the filings revealed details of the homicide, including possible motives.
Shitavious J. Cook, 15, was arraigned Thursday morning on his charges, punishable by up to life imprisonment.

(via the comments at Steve Sailer's)

"I'm not in favour of tax avoidance ..."

Labour leader Ed Miliband said: "I'm not in favour of tax avoidance obviously, but I don't think it is for politicians to lecture people about morality.
"I think what the politicians need to do is - if the wrong thing is happening - change the law to prevent that tax avoidance happening."

Er ... could that be this Ed Miliband?

"David Miliband, the schools minister, and his brother Ed, the chancellor’s economic adviser, are set to avoid paying thousands of pounds in tax through an Inland Revenue loophole which the Labour party pledged to close. "


The Sunday Times has learnt that after Ralph Miliband, the Marxist father of David and Ed, died in 1994, he transferred almost all his assets, including homes in London and Oxfordshire, to his wife.


However, after taking professional advice, the family is understood to have posthumously rewritten his will to give 20% of the London home to both David and Ed.

This scheme is called a “deed of variation” and was highlighted by the chancellor in opposition as an unacceptable way in which the wealthy avoid paying death duties."

“Nice Euro you got here. Be a shame if somebody broke it.”

I get the impression the Euro elite, and especially the Germans, are very disappointed with the Greek vote. A Syringia vote would have been the signal for no EU money, bank runs, Euro exit within a few days.

Spain, Portugal, Italy would all get the message loud and clear.

“Nice Euro you got here. Be a shame if somebody broke it.”

Now the Greeks are in for more years of misery and unemployment - and IMHO they'll still end up out of the Euro. The same may well apply to Spain.

The analogy is a girl – as it might be Angela – with a hopelessly dependent boyfriend, Alexis. She doesn’t want to hurt him, but wants to dump him, so treats him badly in the hope he’ll find a pair from somewhere and break it off himself. Better for her, better for his self-respect.

Instead, he takes all the abuse and promises to be a better boy in future. Angela’s heart sinks … she’s still stuck with him…


It would certainly have been “interesting” in a Chinese curse sense had Syringia won. As I understand it from here, Syringia’s policies are

a) stay in the Euro
b) no to the austerity package

People voting for that platform would have been terribly disappointed one way or the other. If b) had been implemented, the plug would be pulled on Greece “pour encourager les autres”.

At the other end of Europe, Mrs Merkel campaigns on

a) no money printing, no German taxpayer subsidising the periphery
b) total commitment to the Euro project

Again, one way or the other voters believing both of those things are going to have a bit of a rude awakening.

Merkel is slowly, by inches, being dragged down the path of currency debasement and inflation, having sworn against it. The German people, having given up the Deutschmark on the understanding that the ECB would never countenance currency debasement and inflation, are also in for a rude awakening. The Euro elite don’t want to go down that path, but they’re running out of options, and Obama and Cameron are telling them “we’ve done it – what’s your problem?”

I personally find the prospect of the German electorate becoming massively disillusioned with their political leadership a lot more scary than a few thousand Greeks throwing things at the police. But then I’d never have thought that the leadership of the British working class would tolerate having their wages and conditions driven down by cheap imported labour, and I was wrong about that.









UPDATE - Jeremy Warner in the Telegraph on what some hedge funds are thinking :

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, has said no to virtually every form of debt mutualisation so far proposed. But kicking and screaming, she's in practice already agreed to some – the bail-outs – and if the single currency is to survive in its current form, she'll eventually have to go a lot further. The German Chancellor is something of a tease – she says no until she says yes. Numerous lines in the sand have been drawn only eventually to be surrendered as the crisis intensifies.

"China is a kleptocracy of a scale never seen before in human history "

Hedge fund manager and top financial blogger John Hempton looks at the Chinese economy - basically describing how Chinese workers, forced by demography (one child policy) to save for their old age, and limited by the state in their investment options (to bank accounts with a below-inflation return), are robbed by inflation - the money going at low interest rates (negative real rates) to State Owned Enterprises - which are then looted by the elite.

The Chinese banks are the finest deposit franchises in human history. They can borrow huge amounts at ex-ante negative real returns.

And those deposits are mostly lent to State Owned enterprises.

The SOEs are the center of the Chinese kleptocracy. If you manage your way up the Communist Party of China and you play your politics really well may wind up senior in some State Owned Enterprise. This is your opportunity to loot on a scale unprecedented in human history.

Us Westerners see the skimming arrangements. If you want to sell kit (say high-end railway control equipment) to the Chinese SOE you don't sell it to them. You sell it to an intermediate company who on-sell it in China. From the Western perspective you pay a few percent for access. From the Chinese perspective – this is just a gentle form of looting.

And it is not the only one. The SOEs are looted every way until Tuesday...

A normal business – especially a State Owned dinosaur run by bureaucrats – would collapse under this scale of looting. But here is the key: the Chinese SOEs are financed at negative real rates.

A business – even a badly run business – can stand a lot of looting if it is (a) large and (b) funded at negative real rates.Those negative real rates are only possible because there are copious bank deposits available at negative real rates to State controlled banks.

People saving for their old age, then being robbed by high inflation to enrich a financial elite who benefit from negative real rates of interest? Thank God it couldn't happen here!




UPDATE - NYT.

"... a broad consensus of Chinese economists says the country is overdue for another big push to encourage private enterprise and to foster a shift toward a more consumer-driven economy. The challenge, they say, is turning back China’s domineering state sector. But that seems increasingly unlikely. Publicly controlled enterprises have become increasingly lucrative, generating wealth and privileges for hundreds of thousands of Communist Party members and their families. And in a clear sign of its position, the government has moved to limit public debate on economic policy, shutting out voices for change. "

Spanish Infantry Develop Rocket Arm

Remember Laban's trip to Asturias this time last year ?

"I really am surprised there's not mass civil disobedience. Their 1930s forebears - right or left - wouldn't have stood for it."

And our tour of the industrial valleys ?

As you drive up the AS117 through Langreo to San Martin, you could be in the Swansea Valley or Vale of Neath - in the days when the factories were still open.

It felt like early 60s South Wales - a main road and a railway along the valley, houses clustered above where the valley was wide and crammed in where it wasn't, factories below.

At San Martin, we passed the Pozo Soton coal mine and the Galva Zinc plant. The former is now the centre of what looks like a rerun of the 1984-5 UK miners strike.

Mining has been a key element in the local economy in the provinces of Asturias and Leon for centuries. Many miners fear that government plans to reduce subsidies from 300m euros (£242m; $376m) to 110m euros will doom their industry.

Spanish coal miners armed with homemade rockets and slingshots have clashed with police over the country's austerity measures. They fired on the officers in El Entrego near Oviedo close to the mine 'El Soton' which has been hit by cutbacks in coal subsidies. Strikes, road blockades and mine sit-ins have hit 40 pits as 8,000 workers in northern Spain continued their protests.

(incidentally, I note that the Mail's coverage is much superior to the BBCs, and that you'll search the left Brit blogs in vain for a mention of this story)


Two points. I'm not at all opposed to subsidies in the right place and time. The pre-Euro Spanish government managed to keep the mines going without bankrupting itself. La vrai France, so beloved of the English, the France of small family farms and little towns full of real shops, is a product of tariff and subsidy - and long may it remain so.

And rocketry - those photographs brought back memories of a much more irresponsible Laban, and of "battles" between student houses fought across streets from attic windows. It's surprising how accurate a tube-launched rocket can be - but when launching from indoors the loader also needs to have a paper plate or similar handy, to block the rear of the tube - otherwise the room soon fills with smoke, and the sparks can set things ablaze. Just ask Mario Balotelli. 

Safe Haven II

Standard :

Eight women were attacked after being stalked in the “nappy valley” area of Battersea and Clapham, and around the Fulham Road. One victim was seven months pregnant and had a 17-month-old child in a pushchair. Most of the women were strangled from behind with a potentially fatal grip before being forced to the ground. Once down and fighting unconsciousness in front of their screaming children, rings worth up to £50,000 were prised from their fingers.

One gang member, 26-year-old Perrie Williams, even applied for an emergency loan to boost his benefit payments in February last year. A month later, he was on holiday in Miami. All the victims were terrified by the attacks and many suffered shocking injuries to their face and bodies. One woman needed reconstructive surgery to her jaw. Today, a jury at Kingston crown court convicted Williams, of Wandsworth Common, and Christopher Byom, 29, of Clapham, of conspiracy to rob. Anton Lord, 33, of Clapham, had earlier pleaded guilty to the same charge. They will be sentenced at a date to be confirmed.

In April 2009, Sandra Pilger was throttled from behind in front of her two-year-old son near the Fulham Road and her wedding and engagement rings worth £18,000 were taken. Elizabeth Proctor was with her 12-week-old son in a pushchair near Clapham Common when she was grabbed around the neck from behind. Nicola Griggs was attacked in front of her seven-year-old child and baby in a pushchair in Battersea, and Emma Enticott was attacked in Battersea with her three young children.Christina Sheehy was robbed of her £8,000 engagement ring in front of her four-year-old son, and Katherine Britton was pregnant when she was beaten to the ground in Clapham. After losing consciousness, she awoke to find her £11,000 engagement and wedding rings missing.

 Hmm. Apparently the kit was sold in Hatton Garden, whose famously naive jewellers would never be suspicious of a young black guy wanting to unload ten thousand quids worth of sparklers at a bargain price.

That's a familiar modus operandi of theirs. But at least their victims escaped the fate of Neil Williams and Andrew Owen, killed in the great Garotting Panic of 2007.

Safe Haven ?

This blog, last summer :

I was reading just the other day about how Central London property prices are soaring as homes in the capital's richest areas are increasingly seen as a 'safe haven' for capital.

Now the financial centres and the central luxury belt are full of rich people who can buy their way out of a lot of London's nastinesses - the schools, public transport. But as the safer areas become fewer, they'll start to feel increasingly like islands of wealth marooned in a resentful and lawless sea.

Telegraph :

Gangs of homeless Romanian beggars sleeping rough are turning one of London's most expensive streets into a 'disgusting health and safety hazard', it was claimed today. The group of around 50 beggars set up camp on the grassy central reservation of Park Lane after being moved on from nearby Marble Arch several days ago.

Local workers say the group, aged between 30 and 60, spend the afternoons gambling and drinking at the edge of Mayfair. One end of the central reservation, opposite an exclusive Aston Martin dealership, has been turned into a rubbish dump. Empty beer bottles, cigarette packets, half eaten food and clothes littered the grassy area, just a stone's throw from London's most exclusive homes and hotels.

A Westminster City Council spokesperson added: "Groups of homeless people have been moving around the area. They have slightly dispersed from Marble Arch. There is continued dialogue going on with outreach teams to try and get them to move on. They try to suggest that they return home and ask them what they are doing and how they are earning money. It is an ongoing issue and one which we think will require various strategies to tackle, including talking with the groups directly and monitoring chartered coaches arriving in London from Romania."

Now a protected group making the lives of ordinary Brits an utter misery over years is one thing for our rulers. Who cares about people who choose to live in Essex, for God's sake ?

But inconvenience and unpleasant vistas for the very rich (and very rich tourists) is something quite different. After all, it might affect the image of London as a financial centre and a welcoming haven for the world's wealthiest people. So I imagine the authorities will find ways and means - where there's a will, and all that. Nonetheless, it's a straw that shows the way the wind blows.      

It's Still There !

This was on Google News (UK) headlines at lunchtime, and it's still there now. I guess they might want to think about tweaking the algorithm which picks the stories. You never know, there might be an element of bias in that report ...

On Murdering People Whose Politics You Disagree With

Listening to radio news coverage of the Breivik trial a few weeks back, I was reminded of a couple of comment threads that struck me more than a year ago, as I idly browsed lefty London blog Bob From Brockley.


The first was on the subject of comment threads, moderation thereof, and how much is too much.

"I've been searching my soul about the point of blogging, anonymous blogging, comments policies and such things."

Now that's something any blogger can relate to. I won't go into details, but no one likes offensive stuff in the comments. Of course, it may be that one man's truth is another man's offence, and on some occasions the truth can be offensive...

Anyway, a reasoned set of comments. I note that nice American lecturer Sarah AB (of "If People Wouldn't Notice Things We Wouldn't Have To Hide Them" fame) popping up.


Then I read this post - the tale, how authentic I know not, of a concentration camp survivor who on release as a teenager not only stabbed the son of the camp guard who'd killed his family, but made it his business to hunt down the guard, deserting from the Israeli Navy in the early 50s to join the Foreign Legion, where the villain had enlisted - and where he met his just deserts.

I was pleased to see that the general feeling in the comments was against stabbing children because of what their fathers did (as I occasionally point out, "the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children" is a description of what happens, and a warning to fathers of the consequences of their sin, not a prescription for action).

But also in the comments, from one "Waterloo Sunset"* :

"**** the "rule of law". Fascists deserve killing, the only questions surrounding that are tactical ones, hence the lack of dead fascists in the UK."

With one bound we moved from the morality of killing someone who has slaughtered your entire family, to a general principle that "fascists" should be killed.  I hadn't noticed that the UK had a fascist or Nazi party, so you have to assume he's talking about members of the BNP.

Does Bob, who searches his soul about comment policies, recoil in horror at this homicidal commenter and reach for the delete key ? The strange thing is, two comments posted after the homicidal one have been deleted, so it's not as if he's not reading his threads.

Another commenter tries to tease out the nuances in the approach to killing "fascists".

So Waterloo, does it make a difference to you if the fascists have/had power, or is simply holding fascist beliefs enough for you to condone their execution? 

Our potential mass killer (I've no idea what current membership is, but the BNP used to have ten thousand-odd members IIRC) responds :

It depends on whether you're talking about morals or tactics. (Although I'd see this as more about fascist activists, as opposed to those who merely hold fascist views without acting on them).

Morally, no, I don't have an issue with it either way. The violence we see from fascists now pales in comparison compared to how they'd be in power. So I don't think the argument that any direct action against fascists needs to be either a) strict self-defense or b) in retaliation for a specific act by an individual fascist holds any water. In fact, that strikes me as a really bad idea. Why wait until after fascists are in power to stop them? Fascism doesn't start with concentration camps. That's where it ends.

Tactically I think a policy of targeted assassinations would be very unwise, certainly in the context of Western Europe. I'd shed no tears if Griffin got killed, but I don't think it would do any real good overall. There's several reasons for that. To 'step it up' in that way would obviously lead to massive ramifications from the state and I don't think there's enough benefit to justify that. The political climate isn't right for this kind of 'propaganda by the deed' and is unlikely to be unless we do actually have a fascist movement on the verge of gaining power. It's a distraction from the more serious issue about taking back the streets (EDL) and the war for hearts and minds (BNP)....

On physical force anti-fascism generally, I think the old 43 group slogan of "maim, don't kill" is broadly still correct tactically. 
  
Bob removes a follow-up comment, presumably negative. That nice Sarah AB gamely sticks to the subject, trying to ignore the rapidly spreading pool of virtual blood. The guy who wasn't too sure about such tactics still isn't convinced, and our killer gives chapter and verse on why he's hopelessly naive and exactly why we must kill the "fascists" before they do anything bad. After all, by the time they're actually doing bad things, it'll be too late, won't it ?

And at last Bob descends to the fray. Whatever soul searching he's done, I'm not sure I like what he's found therein  :

On the substantive issues, I kind of think that we need to approach this question on something like 4 different levels: moral, political, strategic, tactical. Morally, I respect pure pacifists, but I can't go along with them, and it is certainly the case that certain forms of fascism straightforwardly pass any sensible moral test in terms of deserving stopping physically.

On a political level ...

and so on. And on. And on. Back and forth between the two, with the occasional interjection from that nice Sarah, gamely hanging on in there, not liking at all this talk of killing and maiming people - but then they are fascists, aren't they ?

I find some of the comments here a bit startling (though I'm not completely unsympathetic).

And on, and on, back and forth. While I think we can say that Bob isn't actually, at this moment, in favour of murdering BNP members and activists, his disinclination to grab a Kalashnikov and start shooting is hedged around with so many qualifications and reservations that, were he a hideous rightie, you'd decide that perhaps you'd rather not be linking or commenting there. Talk about "terms and conditions apply" !

Two points - nay, a third springs to mind

a) you can see where a UK Breivik could get ideas from, were Brits to go in for that kind of thing, which thankfully they don't. Once you kick into play the idea that the other side, whoever they be, are going to kill you if they can, so you'd better kill them first ...it's self-defence, innit ? Which is exactly what Breivik is pleading IIRC.

b) the idea that the BNP, English Democrats, UKIP or any other of the anti-immigration, anti-EU parties can in any sense be compared with the Nazi Party, amounts to a disgusting libel on the British people. The kind of vileness in that comment thread is an affront to the peaceful tradition of British, and especially English, political history since the Civil War. I won't go into all the history now, but the various unpleasantnesses and crimes of the Nazis, from anti-semitism to genocide and aggressive war, were all present in German history and politics before Corporal Hitler ever stepped into a Munich beer-hall. (And of course the "left" in the form of the Soviet Union, didn't manage too badly on the anti-semitism and genocide front itself). For good historical and geographical reasons, we have long been the only virgin in a continent of rape victims. Brits don't do fascism - that's a European political tradition - and we do well always and everywhere to avoid European political traditions.


c) Sarah's comments are instructive - in that they show in microcosm how an essentially decent person can, despite their (good) instincts, draw toward accommodation with evil - when the evil comes from those you've come to think of as good, and they tell you that bad things have to be done to other, worse people, in order to protect you. I think there's a lesson there for all of us - and thankfully, this time it's not a history lesson.    




* defiling Ray Davies' classic as well as being a potential mass murderer. I'm not sure which is worse.

(comments are off, alas for the usual reasons)

I Thought That Bedside Cabinet Was Made From An Odd Kind Of Wood

"Ikea 'used Cuban prisoners to make furniture' "

Remarkable

Someone called Michael Scarfo, on the threat to Western Civilisation that is Mark Steyn:

A more extreme example of right wing extremism can be found in Anders Breivik, the Norwegian gunman who chillingly murdered seventy-seven people last summer after publishing a manifesto speaking out against liberal policies and Islamic immigration.

This sort of xenophobia is abhorrent to most Canadians, just like it is to most Europeans, but it appeals to a larger portion of our populations than we'd care to admit.

Quite frankly I doubt that even a tiny proportion of Canadians, no matter how right-wing, are attracted by the idea of massacring scores of innocent people. I think he must be getting "innocent people" mixed up with "baby seals".

Dacre's Law

"As a Guardian comment thread grows longer, the probability of a critical or abusive reference to the Daily Mail approaches 1."

The Untoward Fate

Guardian prison interview with Steve Gough - the "naked rambler" or serial indecent exposer according to your taste. I'm not sure I'd like to meet him when out for a stroll with the kids, but his periods out seem to be shorter and shorter these days - possibly due to his attempts to live his entire life naked - including his air travel. Apparently ever since his 2006 attempt to walk naked to John O'Groats he's been in a series of Scottish prisons - often being arrested immediately outside them as he leaves, naked, having just completed a sentence.

Eventually Gough's case was heard at Scotland's appeal court, where it was found that breach of the peace should indeed be interpreted to criminalise his behaviour. Since then Scottish sheriffs have fallen in line; his sentences have steadily increased to the maximum and, should he keep refusing to dress, he will be caught in an endless cycle of two-year sentences. He insists if he were allowed to return home naked to Eastleigh, he'd cease being naked in public "when I don't have to do it any more".

I have an awful feeling this story's not going to end well.

Whenever he pops up on the news (usually having been sent to prison yet again) I'm reminded of this passage from Hardy's Far From The Madding Crowd :

George's son had done his work so thoroughly that he was considered too good a workman to live, and was, in fact, taken and tragically shot at twelve o'clock that same day -- another instance of the untoward fate which so often attends dogs and other philosophers who follow out a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and attempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largely of compromise.

Osborne - The Heir To Brown and his Stealth Welsh Cake Tax

Osborne is truly the heir to Brown, although I doubt Gordon was big on coke and hookers in his student days. He's the heir in that the tax rises only become apparent in the days after the budget, couched in terms like "simplification" (a great phrase for his granny tax) and "correcting anomalies".

The "Greggs Tax", which adds 20% to the cost of food if it's bought hot (effectively taxing a pasty from the bakers like a restaurant meal), will, apart from wiping out the supermarket rotisserie counter (but good news ! when the chickens are stone cold there'll be no VAT!), do terrible damage to Swansea.

At the literal and metaphorical heart of Swansea Market (itself the heart of what the developers have left of the city) are the two stalls which make Welsh cakes on hotplates. There are other stalls selling the cakes, but aficionados like them hot. Whenever I'm there (quite often) I'll pick up some cold ones to take home and for work colleagues, and hot ones to eat within the hour at a relative's. Round the cake stalls are laver bread, cockles, local butter and cheese and other goodies. You may gather I'm fond of the place.

Hot cakes are already more expensive than the cold ones on other stalls, which are baked offsite. Adding a 20% tax to these cakes is a cruel blow to these small but historic businesses and to Welsh cake lovers all over the civilised world.

I doubt very much that Osborne has ever set foot in Swansea Market. It may not be his fault, but in the Commons he has the air of someone who at school might have delighted in holding lower-form boys heads in the toilet then pulling the chain.

I hope that the Welsh Assembly will be in uproar over this iniquitous tax. Let's see what the Plastic Parliament in Cardiff is made of. If ever a tax strike could command overwhelming support it would be here.

Mass Immigration And The Lewis Turning Point

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard ponders the wealth of nations :

For China, the cheap labour era is over. It faces the "Lewis Point" where the limitless supply of migrants from the countryside dries up and urban wages surge.

Pay has already been rising at 16pc to 18pc annually in the Eastern cities for several years, and this is now happening in Chengdu and Chongqing in the heartland.

I'd heard vaguely before of the economist Arthur Lewis, the first black person to win an academic Nobel, and his famous model :

In his story a "capitalist" sector develops by taking labour from a non-capitalist backward "subsistence" sector.

At an early stage of development, there would be available an "unlimited" supply of labour from the subsistence economy which means that the capitalist sector can expand without the need to raise wages. This results in higher returns to capital which are then reinvested in further capital accumulation. In turn, the increase in the capital stock leads the "capitalists" to expand employment by drawing further labor from the subsistence sector. Given the assumptions of the model (for example, that the profits are reinvested and that capital accumulation does not substitute for skilled labor in production), the process becomes self-sustaining and leads to modernization and economic development.

The point at which the excess labor in the subsistence sector is fully absorbed into the modern sector, and where further capital accumulation begins to increase wages, is sometimes called the "Lewisian turning point" (or "Lewis turning point") and has recently gained wide circulation in the context of economic development in China.

So as long as there's a plentiful supply of new labour, our capitalist doesn't need to raise wages. In its original development context, we're talking early-to-mid nineteenth century - the stuff that people like Dickens and later Zola railed against (in Zola's case after it was well on the way out).

By the latter half of the nineteenth century the country had moved to town, working class living standards were rising - and they didn't stop until the 1970s.

Lewis was writing in a 1950s Britain where "Globalisation In One Country" was undreamt of. It didn't occur to him that a wealthy country might start to put in train the reverse process, bringing in millions of poor from all over the world (a process which a change of government shows no sign or intention of stopping) and stopping wage growth in its tracks, before reversing it. Inflation's been over 5% for three years now, wage rises around 1% a year. That's a hefty cut. Asset price inflation - especially housing - has been high for 25 years.

And, as Adam Posen will tell you, it's a lot easier to let inflation lower real wages than "crush" nominal ones.

But unlike China, where the Communist capitalists, having a concept of a nation and a national interest, won't start importing millions of foreigners the moment wages go up, Britain seems likely to see this "un-development model" continue indefinitely. There are only a finite number of peasants in China, and it's a big country. Eventually, if the Communist Party continue their impressive capitalist stewardship, the average Chinese may be comfortably off.

The UK is a very small country, and there are a lot more poor people in the rest of the world. It could be a very long time before the "limitless supply of migrants" dries up and the UK becomes the first world economy to experience a second Lewis point.

Maybe when I mooted the prospect of UK real wages reaching Chinese levels I was being over-optimistic.

Google Privacy Concerns ?

Following Google's announcement that they intend to harvest my entire Google search history and sell it to the highest bidder, along with my email address, blog posts and the right to drop ads everywhere based on the content of my personal emails and search terms (if I understand their (deliberately?) prolix but unhelpful privacy policy correctly - the above may not be 100% correct but it "illustrates a wider truth"), with a certain sadness I've today changed my homepage to IxQuick, which advertises itself as "the world's most private search engine".

It's probably wholly owned by some intelligence agency - indeed, it's approved by the EU, so caveat emptor. It has an anonymised Google front-end, for those who can't do without Mountain View.

Pity. Started on Altavista all those years ago, been using Google for ten or more years. But as the marketing side of Google took off, quite apart from the annoying ads which follow you around from site to site, I'm increasingly pained by Google's attempts to return the results it thinks I'm interested in, rather than the results I've asked for.

More Dreadful Stereotyping

It's not just Andrew Gilligan - here's the Telegraph's Jeremy Warner on yet another looming Argentinian financial crisis (turns out that, like the Greeks, they've been fiddling the figures) :

Argentina's problem is that it remains mired in a politically and economically corrupt past. Until these things change, it will continue to stagger from one crisis to the next, regardless of the exchange rate regime it adopts. Devaluation is no substitute for structural reform. Given the origins of its immigrant population, it is perhaps no surprise that the Argentine economy actually has quite a lot in common with the troublesome periphery of the eurozone. In terms of its problems, it's Italy, or even Greece, magnified several times over.

I see. One set of wops and dagoes is very much like another, eh ? ... Laban takes him to task as I did Mr Gilligan.

Isn't all this stuff just the worst sort of racist stereotyping? The idea that Latins in Argentina are fiscally irresponsible because Latins in Europe are fiscally irresponsible is ridiculous.

Next thing he'll be saying that Swedes in Minnesota are thrifty and hard-working.

Mr Warner, you're an intelligent man. Surely you must have been taught that we are all exactly the same, and that's why we should celebrate our differences?