Forget A Minimum Alcohol Price, Let's Put A Minimum Price On Paid-for Tupping

Yorkshires finest sex workers of Spencer Place

I've been thinking a lot about this minimum pricing lark and I've reached a conclusion; I like it. I fact I like it so much I can think of a number of other area we could apply it to:

- Receding hairline matt varnish.
- Vaseline intensive care eye-lid moisturiser.
- Cocaine and related products.
- Samuri swords.

For as you know a minimum price will have the following effects:

- it dissuades frivolous uses of those products it's applied to, leading to a much snazzier kind of user.
- it leads to better quality product as providers of poorer versions quickly go under.

Examples:

Receding hairline matt varnish

Ye gods the light! It burns!

VIC eye-lid moisturiser

Moisture. SO MUCH MOISTURE!

And clearly the last 2 examples never saw anything crop up as a consequence of raising the minimum price to, say, ooh 5 years in jail minimum.







Oh.

Well never mind that I have a rather elegant proposal we could apply minimum pricing too which would kill 2 (fat) birds with one stone.

We legalise prostitution and apply a minimum price for services rendered by sex workers; I can see it now (or hypothesise on the impact as my wife doesn't let me out after dark; it's scary out there) - beautiful, scantily clad maidens fair wandering the darker reaches of Leeds' Red Light District scanning for work, Roxanne will put on her red light tonight.

But wait Tom it just won't be that way you say? Why not - surely higher quality poontang will be in the offing if we raise the minimum price Bertha charges versus some lithe eastern European competition; it'll be safer too - the bottom-dwelling echelons of the market for sex will no longer have the cash to partake, prostitutes will be cleaner and safer as their violent cheapo-stinko punters disappear.

What do you mean that will put Bertha on the dole? She was on there already - why does it matter if she can't afford that Sky TV anymore? She was already finding it difficult to attract punters as it was, particularly since you banned smoking in her work place.

And wait your telling me those violent, dirty disease riddled punters just found other ways of getting rowdy, assaulting folks, drinking alcohol hand gel and sniffing glue? What - they managed to shack up with one another?

Then,

For what reason do you think pricing the violent, unwashed masses out of the drinking market will have an impact on their behaviour?

And even if it did why would you allow the purveyors of alcohol to keep the artificially raised profit from this activity?

There is no economic justification for creating a minimum price; there is no legitimate moral argument ultimately - your just spreading the misery on the lowest earners from the top.

But, by forcing the revenue onto the industry, which will see some companies who went for premium product not affected by minimum pricing, whilst killing other groups who sold alcohol to the lowest paid (and I believe we would be lucky to see this be neutral in aggregate on the alcohol industry) you create the least good, most destructive justification of them all: a political one.

Raising taxes is always unpopular, artificially raising prices further along the supply chain (whether it be money, booze, fags...) mitigates the effects of that unpopularity, moving it onto other groups (read big alcohol/tobacco/finance etc.)

Time we started focusing blame where due.

The Left Have Set The Bar

But Lib Dem leader and Deputy Prime Minister Mr Clegg said on Tuesday he was a "strong supporter" of the cap, as were the "vast majority" of people, because it was "fair to say you can't receive more in benefits than if you were to earn £35,000 before tax".

And for one of those rare fleeting moments Mr. Clegg is right.

Still when all is said and done the question I will be asking to my mp Rachel Reeves and what I urge you to ask your own mp and assorted lefties will be this:

If £26,000 is not enough in take-home benefits to support those on welfare then why is it more than ample for a taxpaying worker?

Divvy up that figure into 2 people working and you get a minimum £13k income untaxed that Labour and associated peers say is desperately not enough to support a household; current standard tax free allowance is ~£6.5k for most folk.

So why is it ok to tax twice as much income from a hardworking taxpayer as it is to cap double that in benefits to someone who isn't working?

Blogging light for the foreseeable future; work heavy. Will try to get more in but money and patience in short supply. Stay safe and eyes open!

Those Scoundrels? Or Blaming The Wrong Schlebs

Profit margins at the ‘big six’ energy firms have leapt more than 700 per cent as millions worry about keeping warm this winter.

 Those fiends! they are casting our elderly, our infirm and our poor into the oblivion of an icy, cold winter freeze, doomed to die.

The average amount of profit per  customer has risen from £15 a year to £125 in just a few months, according  to the industry regulator Ofgem.

Wait wait wait - so before a few months ago the blood, sweat and tears of business men in the energy sector only roped them £15 profit for every piece of business? Wait - it was even worse before?

via The Daily Mail - why are we getting so mad at this?

Up to Aug 2009 the margin on energy prices were negative; energy companies were losing money versus rising costs, particularly in wholesale energy costs and "other" costs.


"Other" costs is a little disengenuous - if wholesale costs are approx 45%, then we add in the costs that you cannot drop - i.e. operating and network costs - this comes in at 29% (74%) then you add in the net margin for the company: 9%. 9. per. cent.; so 83% of the bill isn't up for negotiation and is intrinsic to the cost (and let's be fair if you know a plumber who would work on a margin at 9% give me his number - I have a few jobs I'd like him to do around Tomrat Towers) then 17%, or ~£230 of the highest domestic bill recorded, is going to these guys:

That's right; you are giving a collective £6.7Bn of your energy bills to these smoes.


It is only right that the energy companies should be hitting back; it is long overdue (and not just for the energy companies) - it is not an unfair that a company providing a service should expect a decent profit; when you consider that 9% of the bill goes to the company in profit is paltry compared to double that figure taken in taxation/government and "green" initiatives, not to mention the very likely additional efficiency losses due to the monopoly on transmission that the National Grid, a de facto state monopoly, has.


We really need to shut this particular shit down.

The Best £7 You'll Ever Spend

As I lay in bed recovering from the lurgy I cannot believe many of today's tabloids main stories:

Ministers are locked in battle over a Liberal Democrat plan to splash out £5billion to boost the economy.

As the International Monetary Fund slashed economic forecasts, Vince Cable stunned colleagues by claiming there is ‘flexibility’ within austerity plans for public spending on road schemes, business parks and faster broadband links.

He was responding to an IMF report which said growth will be ‘anaemic’ and warned the world was in a ‘dangerous new phase’, with Britain facing a one-in-six chance of slipping back into recession.
...
However, the proposals for substantial public spending on infrastructure deals – referred to as ‘Plan A-plus’ – are clearly being talked about and the Business Secretary insisted that the Lib Dems were not backing away from the Coalition’s commitment to cutting the budget deficit.

The story is similar across several papers, and whilst the amounts talked about in the grand scheme of things are paltry*, it is indicative of the fatal conceit our ministers have that any problem they have is solvable if you only coat it in paper money and hope it sticks.

Which is why I think we need to remind Osbo the Clown of a few basic economic realities and logic; it is growing increasingly obvious he was more stuck on the PP side of his PPE course when he attend toffee-nose college at Oxbridge-on-sea or wherever and thus is up to us his masters to beef up the E.

Let's send him this, Henry Hazlitt's finest work (the link goes to a free copy for your own benefit). The tome explains in big shiny, easy to understand words the futility of what we have come to know as "Keynesian Economics"** - something we used to originally call "Village Idiot Speak" - it explains eruditely the contrary folly of many types of public spending and regulation in a way even Ed Ballsup could understand***.

Let's do this on some key date in the near future: how about Henry Hazlitt's birthday? November 28th sounds like as good as any date. You could send them a print out of the tome from the link above but it might be more striking if you bought a copy: Amazon are selling it pretty cheap at the moment.

As someone who took part in LPUK's (RIP) 1984 campaign - giving every MP in the last parliament a copy of George Orwell's 1984 with a word of advice not to treat it as an instruction manual - I know that these kind of campaigns work; I'm sure after the first couple of hundred copies Georgie will start handing them out/leaving them in Whitehall loos/propelling them into tue Thames - in any case likely every mp will see one before the years out.

Go on you know it makes sense.

* = incidentally what have they been spending money on if they haven't been improving infrastructure over the last 15 years? WTF are we paying out half our GDP for if they are having trouble keeping the sodding lights on?

** = yes I'm aware that Keynesian economics isn't nearly as simple as that but only in so much as I am also aware that the left-leaning intelligentsia and elites in government essentially treat it as code for hacking the valve off the spending facet.

*** = in fact if you can get hold of 2/3 copies pretty sure Balls and Cable could both benefit from owning a copy.

Giving Out Of Poverty

I am on holiday having spent the better part of 3 months working 12 hour days just to keep vaguely on top of my work; it has been the peak season for us and I am bushed. I am on a retreat with several churches in North Wales with my wife and daughter followed by 2 days back before heading out to Spain, palming off our daughter on the grandparents (you know, for an actual vacation.)

In a meeting this morning the retreat organiser got up to remind us of the annual offering we make to the hotel staff; we bulk-buy the rooms and services of 2 hotels each year and at dinner on the Thursday we all contribute massively to the tips for the staff; the amount is divied up by management depending on the hours worked - we are hoping to raise over a £1000 this year as the staff are impeccable, attentive and long-suffering considering the number of elderly and infirm with us.

That is why it struck me as Dow right offensive when David, the organiser, told us that the management, in a spirit of honesty and integrity, put all the collected offerings through payroll, making it subject to tax and national insurance, then top up the amount extorted in tax so it doesn't hit their employees: the cleaners, the waiters, the receptionists and the cooks.

It struck me that in the drive to alter tax breaks for the rich and poor one thing that is never brought up in discussion or is very quickly closed down is the righteousness of taking this money; the workers in the hotel are all minimum wage and earn every penny yet will still be taxed and squeezed till their pips squeak; the final act of indignity is only avoided by the long-suffering management of the hotels giving up their own monies to dole out a gift for their staffs' hard work given by those, the majority of which are on a fixed income, who are seeing their savings undermined, and their own limited income destroyed by inflation. All so David Cameron can continue paying foreigners to build idols to the green god while thousands die for want of NHS resources being cut, squandering every saving he makes on keeping a currency we elected not to join afloat and an established elite saving face.

The poor will not bleat because they will never understand why their wage packet seems so light despite their phone calculator saying it should be something else; they don't understand why the terms of their contract with government - what they are getting with their money - are so inexplicably skewed towards the socialist kleptocracy and squandervatives in charge because they are too busy scrubbing toilets and waiting tables, and their management have enough respect and integrity to mitigate the effects of the looting of a gift from those they serve to ensure it is a finer offering than is possible.

But we are on the precipice; when understanding comes it carries a whirlwind with it and it will carry this new bourgeois with it; we have seen a glimpse of it over the last few weeks with a thousand people suddenly realising that the behaviour of the politicos' client class will never be challenged, whilst those who do try, the breadwinners, the tax-chattels defending their property, will be punished severly.

This can't go on.

If 6 Were 9

Remember back when the coalition still hadn't markedly pissed off anyone? You know it was sometime in October/November; Osbo had just told us all calmly that DROSSTRAP would be the order of the day - the brakes going on for getting more indebted, with a view to a second term setting a plan to handle all those IOUs under the carpet - Zippy as business secretary was chatting up journalists and briefing against businesses his lefty constituents didn't particularly like; Cameron courageously and heroically arguing down the amount of our government money handed over to an increasing EU budget in this new age of austerity.

This last point, Cameron's first of many backtracks on the EU, thus tune being to push for a halt in it's budget or potentially a decrease, led to a 2.9% increase: equating to roughly £440 million extra in our contribution.

Man, those were the days weren't they?

So what has this budgetary increase now become?

[EU budget increase: £0.45Bn] + [Irish Bailout: £7Bn] + [Portugese bailout: £6Bn] = £13.45 BILLION in additional money's going to the Eurozone.

If £0.45Bn = 2.9% increase that equates to £0.225Bn per 1%; therefore £13.45Bn/£0.225Bn = a 59.77% increase in our net EU contributions.

Looked at another way the average cost of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning "Joint Strike fighter" - those jets we have had to cut the majority of our order of to make up budget cuts - come in based on the Wikipedia pages' figure at about £85 Million a piece.

So we've just given up a potential 158 brand spanking new and shiny fighter jets bailing out the unaccountble Eurozone colleagues an their ambitions for a single currency.

You still glad we got "cast-iron Dave" at the helm? More like pig iron; will crumble at the slightest hint of pressure onto a bed of taxpayers money.

Can We Not Call Time On This Already?

David Cameron vowed to hand hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money plus vital military secrets to Pakistan yesterday to make amends for offending the Muslim nation last year.

The Prime Minister pledged to invest £650million in Pakistani schools at a time when the education budget at home is being cut.

Britain is also to give highly sensitive military technology to combat roadside bombs to the Pakistani security services, which are widely blamed for funding and arming the Taliban.

Notwithstanding the humongous amount of money simply mulched up by our own local authorities on beano's to far away lands*, I think giving aid money bungs to hostile, submarine and nuclear-weapon-totting savages is an appalling use of our money by our increasingly vainglorious Euroslime Dave.

If it is worth giving aid to Pakistan (and I'm sure it is), there should be no need to compel taxpayers to do it; it'll come naturally by the charitable sector, and as we see from the revealed preferences of all those calling for more government spending (H/T to Tim Worstall) they are unwilling to back up spending plans which involve giving money to other nation's governments.

After all isn't that really the ultimate test for the left's desired spending habits: not their desire to give to Oxfam or UNICEF, but cutting checks to give directly to those governments responsible for the people concerned? If you are unwilling to give to corrupt third world politicos in places like Libya, Pakistan or Umbongo, why should the government be able to?

There's A Simple Solution To This Too!

In a tale which sounds like it could have come straight from a Yes, Minister script, Digby Jones, the former head of the CBI, reveals this weekend that he was so frustrated that he wasn't allowed to drive a British-built car he even offered to use his own Jaguar.
...
The book, serialised in The Telegraph, also reveals that inward investment opportunities were often squandered because civil servants were slow at responding to requests from businesses that wanted advice.

In one example the Canadian aerospace and engineering company, Bombardier, almost abandoned plans to invest £500m to build business jets in Northern Ireland because it had "heard nothing" from the Government's business department.

Civil service incompetence should come as nothing new to readers of this blog; some may even be aware of the downright insidious behaviour against it's political opponents.

But a question remains; why do we need a BIS? Implementing health & safety legislation could be handled by the Dept. if Sickness, tax liabilities by Her Mag's State Sanctioned Theft & Violence and environmental concerns by the Department of Energetic Zealots for Climate Change or the Department of Environmental Fabians & Rural Turnip Mulchers.

So why not wrap up what appears to be a vehicle for state-gerrymandering in private business, an especially repugnant concept considering that it mandates a third party's involvement in what should be a private agreement between the individuals involved.

Angry At The Wrong People

Fuel prices have fallen since the Budget, but by less than the 1p cut in duty announced by Chancellor George Osborne, UK-wide research has found.

There was a 0.6p average fall in petrol and diesel from Wednesday to Thursday, the survey by Experian Catalist found.

The 1p cut in duty on petrol and diesel took effect from 1800 GMT on Wednesday.

The Retail Motor Industry Federation (RMI) says many garages will delay implementing the cut until stocks of existing, more expensive fuel are gone.

Aunty Beeb getting mad at those evil capitalist bastards not passing on the whole penny of duty our glorious leaders deigned to bequeath us in an act of infinite grace and generosity

And how much was this value?




Based on the above forecast you get the following percentages:

-57.19p duty = 47.7%
-39.85p product = 33.2%
-17.86p VAT = 14.9%
- 5p delivery & retail = 4.2%

Or to put another way 62.2% of the cost of fuel goes into George Osbourne's pockets.

4.2%.

Vs.

62.2%.

That poor chap who gets your late night beer & rizla run order on your way home walking from town takes just 4p from every £1 you spend on fuel through the week; the government takes 60-bloody pence and positively conflates many of the conflicts that are driving the price skyward.

Aunty Beeb should be ashamed of herself.

Am I Supposed To Be Grateful?

Just did the budget calculator on Aunty Beeb- the results:

The indications are that you will be £110.82 better off.
Breakdown of Difference £
Alcohol £-24.71
Fuel £-32.09
Income tax £+400.00
National insurance £-82.58
Tax credits £-144.80
Vehicle excise duty £-5.00

So, as long as I behave as a mindless automaton, consuming a precise amount of victory gin each weekend and driving nowhere but work and to pick up ever more costly food I can be a whole £100+ up?

And I should be grateful?