Tim Worstall

Here’s an opportunity for redemption. The First Vice President of the Iranian government has announced that Iran will “track and pursue” the maker of the film that is the pretext for the spate of riots breaking out in the ME.

The appropriate response: touch a hair on his head, and we’ll obliterate every Iranian government facility. Then we’ll make the rubble bounce for grins. He exercised his rights as an American. Problem with that? Talk to the B-2.

As Palmerston said about Don Pacifico. Civis romanus sum.

Deutscher Hausfrauenbund, the German housewife association that she works for, offers courses in how to run a household, from practical skills to teaching young people how to budget. It also offers a “master housewife” qualification for the more ambitious.

That you might know how to do something is not enough. You must have a certificate to prove it.

Suppose Oxford and Cambridge were to ask every state school to identify, at 15, its brightest pupils academically (one, two or three, depending on size). Suppose those pupils were given every possible support and guidance in A-level subject choice and teaching. Suppose they were invited annually to week-long summer schools where they could form their own peer networks of solidarity and support.

We have a word to describe such a practice.

Streaming.

Oft considered a no no in our famously egalitarian education system.

Hell, why not go the whole hog. Take the 10% who might possibly get there and stick them in a different school?

We could call them grammars.

The Sun, too, sees no hypocrisy in supporting the duke and duchess’s bid to sue the photographer responsible for snapping Kate’s chest in a Sun Says editorial – just a couple of pages after printing a picture of Kelly, 22, from Daventry with her own breasts exposed. Online the newspaper has a host of scantily clad women for readers to pore over, such as Georgia Salpa in a bikini, Maria Fowler “flashing her cleavage”, and Kelly Brook posing for a new calender.

Facepalm.

One group of women has said “Why, yes, sure, you can put a picture of my nekkid titties in your newspaper”.

Another woman has not given such assent.

The message it seems, is clear – it’s fine to print pictures of half naked women, as long as they are not heading for the throne.

Idiot.

This is the sort of thing that would never have happened in the old days!

When David became the 11th Earl in 1999,

Tsk, he became the 11 th Duke.

As is reported several paras up. And given that he was already a Marquis he could indeed then inherit an Earldom but we wouldn’t actually say that he had.

Well, unless the Marquis was in the Irish peerage or something.

Which leads to a rather Hayekian point about the subbing of newspapers. Yes, sure, some of it is about spolling, grammar, flow of the story. These can indeed be done over the internet by people thousands of miles away (and thousands of £s cheaper). But there’s also a great deal of local knowledge, even implicit knowledge if you like, necessary.

The above is trivial, certainly (and it might even be true that he inherited an Earldom along with the Dukedom, a fairly common thing to happen even if we wouldn’t remark upon it) but there are times when it isn’t. One I recall is the Queen meeting members of the Parliament of the Isle of Wight. That was the caption to a picture of the Isle of Man.

This isn’t, BTW, a story about Australians doing this work for the Telegraph. It’s still subcontracted out, yes, but the peeps are mainly in London now. It’s more a story about how you want older people doing this work. Peeps who have two or three decades under their belt of this local sort of knowledge. But older peeps are more expensive…..trade offs, trade offs.

This post dedicated to the memory of Tom Payton.

We should use these Games to pinpoint where our genius lies

Well, OK. The British genius has long been averred to lie in the ability to muddle through. We tend not to have grand plans, strategies. The Empire was collected in a series of accidents really. Wars won by people plodding on. The Industrial Revolution the result of the chaos of every blacksmith, cotton spinner and ironmonger in the country doing their own thing.

Given that this is what we’re collectively good at now we’ve identified it we can apply the lesson.

Leave us all well alone.

Despite seeing £233,000 pass through his NatWest Bank account in the 12 months prior to his arrest Mr Adoboli’s account was overdrawn by £3,594 when he was arrested on September 15 last year, the court was told. Across his four banks accounts and two credit cards the 32-year-old trader owed £4,181.

His primary current account showed payments to eight pay-day loan companies including Wageday Advance, Wonga.com, Payday UK and Pounds to Pocket.

US children eat 1,000 milligrams too much salt
US children eat as much salt as adults, which is about 1,000 milligrams too much, the equivalent of a McDonald’s Big Mac hamburger or rasher or bacon, new research has found.

I’ve got to do some financial forecasts.

I don’t know how to use a spreadsheet program.

No, really, not a clue. Last one I used was Lotus 1.0 back in 1986. Obviously I’ve not retained the info about how to create anything. I don’t know how to enter figures, let alone get it to add them up. And as for more complex….

So, an interesting conundrum. Given that what I want to do (24 months, perhaps 10 or 15 revenue/cost items) is pretty simple, I have to decide. Is it easier to do it the old way, pen and paper, or should I learn how to use a spreadsheet?

I have to admit to tending towards pen and paper you know…..

Could French victim of the Alpine massacre have been the main target? French police admit cyclist may have led ‘double life’

Sylvain Mollier worked in the nuclear industry, specialising in zirconium metal-working for nuclear reactors

That is fascinating.

No idea whether there’s any truth to it mind.

Vaguely plausible I guess, the nuclear industry does use some interesting Zr based alloys. But they’re not exactly secret really.

I guess you could tell a tale of someone working in the field helping out the Pakistanis, Indians, Iranians, on the side perhaps. But I’m not sure, for there’s a technical fault line in the nuclear world.

Western (perhaps should be “Western”) zircalloy is a Zr/Sn alloy. That’s what the tubes for sticking uranium into a reactor are made from and a lot of the surrounding metal work as well. It is also Zr with a very low Hf content….

Ah, background. Zr and Hf are always found together. Chemically very similar indeed. Zr ore will be 2-4% Hf. They are a right bugger to separate, one from the other. So, we don’t bother. Go and buy a piece of zirconium and it will be 2-4% Hf. The Zr we stick into Al alloys will be 2-4% Hf. The zirconia (the oxide) that is used to make ceramics is 2-4% Hf.

However, Zr is transparent to neutrons, Hf opaque to them. So you can’t use the normal Zr in the nuclear industry. You have to extract the Hf. A right bugger to do, as above. But you do this, use the Zr to make the tubing etc that you want the neutrons to pass through and the Hf to make the control rods that you don’t want them to pass through. Or ship it off to the jet engine makers who use it sometimes.

OK, so all nuclear industry uses Zr purified of Hf. Indeed, get a piece of low Hf Zr and try to export it and you’ll go to jail for many years. I’ve had a license to do this at times and the warnings are blood curdling.

OK, back to Zr/Sn. That’s what the western industry uses. The Soviets didn’t, they used Zr/Nb. Just one of those things, metallurgy split there.

Which brings us to the Indian/Pakistani/Iranian thing. Or any other naughty people who have been breaching the Non-Proliferation stuff. I have no idea which way they went. “Western” or “Soviet”? Zr/Sn or Zr/Nb? If they went the Nb route I cannot see how a Froggie scientist or metallurgist can help them. If the Sn then I can conceivably (note that I’m not saying there’s anything to this story, just trying to work through whether it’s even possible).

Or perhaps there is some possibility. If it’s “metal working” then the major thing about Zr and its alloys is that when finely divided it’s friable. Turnings for example, shavings, can near spontaneously catch fire, even explode. Indeed, that’s how car airbags work. Finely divided Zr powder will go bang when given a sharp shock. So, mix it with carbon and make a little pellet. When this is shocked the Zr lights, the carbon burns, creates CO2 and the airbag inflates. Or use the same thing in an artillery shell. Or cluster bombs.

Fun stuff this. One US executive of a Zr producing company spent 3 years in jail. What he thought he’d sold to go into airbags ended up in cluster bombs. Doesn’t matter that he was lied to, this is a strict liability offense.

There are indeed certain risks in the metals trade.

It’s Ms. Orr again. All about Page 3.

Tits, nipples, misogyny.

Sigh.

How can people gain maturity without gaining the most basic insights into the human condition? Surely marriage, the raising of sons, would lead to the knowledge that male sexuality is a frighteningly uncomplicated beast? Ooooh! Titties! Baps!

Printing photographs of them is not misogyny: it’s exploitation of the simplicity of that male lust. As is the practice of women dressing up going in for showing a bit of cleavage.

Surely there are more productive things to do with one’s time than whine about the way that humans are humans.

More people want increased public spending even at the price of higher tax rates, according to the annual British Social Attitudes survey.

But is a pony for all actually possible?

For it’s entirely possible for taxes to be at such rates that increasing said rate produces less tax revenue than before. That old Laffer Curve thing.

Looking around at the major taxes I’m not entirely convinced that there is much room to raise them. 45% (including NI etc rather higher than that) seems to be around and about that Laffer peak. Certainly, there are enough people who seem to think it is. The Saetz paper for example, tells us that 54% including employer paid taxes on employment is the peak in a system with allowances. Allowances including things like the basic EU right to bugger off. Ad we are around and about at that 54% with employers’ NI.

Certainly I think taxes at the benefits/wages interface are above the Laffer Curve. The millions of people facing higher than 60% marginal tax and benefit withdrawal rates, the hundreds of thousands on 80% and more.

We’re told that 28% CGT is that peak collection rate.

VAT at 20%….not sure I see all that much upside possible in that rate. Fag taxes with the smuggling in from Europe don’t seem to have much upside. There’s good economic support (and a lot who shout about the idea to be sure) that any corporation tax rate above 0% is over the long term peak.

I’m not drawing a line in the sand you understand, insisting that no more revenue can be squeezed from the populace. Rather, pointing out that higher tax rates do not necessarily mean higher revenue. And that it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the UK economy was around and about at the peak of what can be squeezed out given the current underlying structure.

Change the structure and you probably could gain more of GDP in taxation. But doing so would probably mean going the Nordic route: having a much more classically liberal economy underneath than we do.

Apple growers face grim harvest with worst yield for 15 years

Apple growers, cider-makers and gardeners in despair as cold, rainy summer leaves orchards bare and threatens higher prices

For scrotes will still be able to get drunk on White Lightning because, get this, there are other parts of the world which have managed to produce apples this year.

If the localists, the locavores, ever manage to get their plans enacted such merriment among the underclass would have to cease every few years. Which would be a terrible burden upon the rest of us as God Knows what they’d be like if they were ever sober.

Why? There’s a simple answer. Canada is developing the world’s second largest reserve of oil. Did I say oil? It’s actually a filthy mixture of bitumen, sand, heavy metals and toxic organic chemicals. The tar sands, most of which occur in Alberta, are being extracted by the biggest opencast mining operation on earth. An area the size of England, of pristine forests and marshes, will be dug up, unless the Canadians can stop this madness. Already it looks like a scene from the end of the world: the strip-miners are creating a churned black hell on an unimaginable scale.

Just look at this picture, just look at it. This is the pristine wilderness that is being destroyed:

Disgusting, isn’t it? Soon this will look like this:

And then where will the buffalo roam, eh, eh?

Ah, sorry, my mistake. I’ve got the pictures in the wrong order. The second one is the mining taking place and the first one is after the mining and remediation have finished.

Does the average human produce enough faecal waste to fertilise the land necessary to feed that human?

I rather assume not as it would likely violate the conservation of something or other.

But does anyone actually know?

The reason I ask: if yes then an entirely vegetarian and organic agriculture is possible. We need no new abstraction of fertiliser from the environment nor do we need animal wastes.

However, if not, then we need either animal waste or we need “artificial” fertilisers. Which means dumping either the vegetarian option or the organic.

So it would be interesting to know: can humans shit enough to fertilise the crops that feed humans?

Princes Harry and Willy have police protection teams.

Both Harry and Willy do military stuff. One of them currently in a war zone, the other search and rescue, isn’t it?

So, err, where do said police teams drop them off and pick them back up again?

I assume that they’re not there in the back of that Wessex or whatever it is Will’s flying. And I know they’re not in an Apache. But are they at Bastion? Kabul (if they even cycle through there which I don’t think they do)?

I sorta assume that they accompany Will up to the base perimeter and wish him a decent day at the office. Or Harry, shake hands at the gates of Brize Norton and promise to send care packages.

I just can’t shake this image though, of Plod’s finest, in centurion helmets, riding shotgun in an attack helicopter.

The Duke of Rutland are I are separating … but we’ll live together in our castle and have new partners: Duchess’s remarkable response to her husband’s infidelity

Err, why do you think they build those houses with more than one wing?

At the ASI.

Breaking up the NHS.

Innocence of Muslims is one of the hardest cases for liberals I’ve come across.

Depends what sort of liberal you are talking about I suppose. But to this classical liberal it’s all really very simple indeed.

We have decided that freedom and liberty trump the giving of offence. Freedom of speech is one of the founding principles of our society, along with freedom of association and equality before the law. These have all been hard fought for over the past millennium and while it’s a very partial view of our history it is indeed possible to follow the thread through it. Indeed Whig, liberal, history pretty much does this.

There are societies built on alternative propositions: certainly there are some where freedom of speech does not include the ability to call the King a poopyhead nor a prophet a paedophile. Or a figment of the collective imagination, a series of folk tales cobbled together or gay (note, these are indeed all things that have been said, in our society, about a prophet central to one of the religions practiced in it) or whatever it is that one might want to say.

No one has to agree with these things, no one has to accept them, but all have to tolerate their being said. That’s just what we mean by being liberal, being a liberal society. So why this case should be problematic for a liberal I’m just not sure. Either you’re in favour of the freedom of speech, yes even for those who mightily piss off tens of thousands to hundreds of millions of people, or you’re not a liberal.

Rather case closed at that point.

Agreed, we do permit of two exceptions: libel and the incitement to imminent violence. Other than that, as the Onion has revived the old Salman Rushdie joke:

WASHINGTON—Following the publication of the image above, in which the most cherished figures from multiple religious faiths were depicted engaging in a lascivious sex act of considerable depravity, no one was murdered, beaten, or had their lives threatened, sources reported Thursday. The image of the Hebrew prophet Moses high-fiving Jesus Christ as both are having their erect penises vigorously masturbated by Ganesha, all while the Hindu deity anally penetrates Buddha with his fist, reportedly went online at 6:45 p.m. EDT, after which not a single bomb threat was made against the organization responsible, nor did the person who created the cartoon go home fearing for his life in any way. Though some members of the Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist faiths were reportedly offended by the image, sources confirmed that upon seeing it, they simply shook their heads, rolled their eyes, and continued on with their day.

Myself I think there’s actually something rather deeper at issue here. We say we’ve freedom of speech and in the US the Constitution decrees it. Yet there are large parts of the world which don’t have it: OK, so far, so obvious. What is the real problem perhaps is that those who do not have it really, properly, do not understand what it is. Fair enough given that all too many in our own society don’t understand it: you can say what you like as long as it’s not hurtful for example, or racist, or fascist, as various groups try to variously insist at times.

But many really just don’t get it: the US Government has no power over what some shithead in California decides to say about Islam or Mohammed. It’s not that they ignore it, or desire it to be said, or encourage it or anything like that at all.

To make an analogy: early 1990s, Moscow officials come to London to try and work out this free market thing. One asks “Well, who is in charge of bread supplies for London?”. He simply does not believe the answer “No one”. It is so far out of his knowledge of the world that he cannot even conceive that the answer could be correct. If something happens it is because some individual or system plans and makes it happen. Voluntary cooperation through markets on a large scale just cannot be shoehorned into his worldview.

And thus I think it is with many in that wide world about free speech. Given that their own societies do not allow it (and yes, this does apply to those ruling the societies as well as those in them) they simply cannot conceive of a world or a place where this freedom exists. That’s why they get so confused about it when it happens.

Willy Hutton performing his valuable service as the butt end of our moral and policy compass:

The future of our defence, like the future of the City, lies in making common cause with Europe. It will be a rocky ride – the sceptics could yet force and win an anti-EU referendum. But exit will only trigger a faster recognition of the reality that is forcing the proposed deal between BAE and EADS. Our only future is European. Before 2030 Britain will be applying to join the euro – and thus beginning a catch-up with a Europe which by then will be much more prosperous than us, looted by our feckless elite and their Eurosceptic apologists. Watch and wait.

Clearly the entire EU project is about to fail imminently.