Money Category
Money in the news and how you are going to pay and pay and pay
The most hardcore pawn shop in Mississippi
DYNAMIC pawn “for a new breed of pawn shop”. Just look for the big balls in Mississippi:
Posted: 9th, October 2012 | In: Money, The Consumer | Comment
Yeah, Facebook and Twitter are good, but better than sex?
THE Mail seems to be saying that checking Facebook and Twitter are better than having sex. Sure, the two little technology products are pretty good but seriously, better than sex?
Checking social networking sites is more tempting than sex and cigarettes, a study has revealed.
Researchers at Chicago University’s Booth Business School used BlackBerrys to log reports about participants’ willpower and desires over seven days.
The online poll of 250 participants in Germany revealed the yearning to interact through tweets, photos, and comments was stronger than sex and cigarettes.
Even better than fags? That is when sex and they aren’t intemiately involved?
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Posted: 9th, October 2012 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
The glory of green energy: only three years until the lights go out
WELL isn’t this an interesting how d’ye do then? It would appear that we’ve a more than just minor chance of the lights going out in about three years’ time:
The UK risks energy shortages by 2015 or 2016, energy regulator Ofgem has predicted. The shortages will primarily be caused by EU environmental legislation forcing the early closure of coal and oil-fired power stations, it said.
Its first annual Capacity Assessment [93-page / 1.9MB PDF] projects that electricity margins, or the amount of spare generation capacity on the system, could fall from 14 per cent today to 4 per cent over the next three years. The figures are based on joint modelling by the regulator and the National Grid. Ofgem is required under the Energy Act to report annually to Parliament on the availability of electricity and gas for meeting the reasonable demands of consumers in the UK.
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You have too much Government when you can investigate a dead fish in Texas
I THINK we’d all agree (OK, you anarchists at the back can shut up) that we do in fact need to have some government. Making sure there’s only one Army seems like a good idea, we need some method of working out who empties the bins. So some ruling structure that deals with these things for us seems like a decent enough idea.
But there are also those who think that it’s possible to have too much government. I’m among them but I offer you this as an example:
“We’re more conscientious in looking for this now than we were five or six years ago,” said Kurt Kelley, a game warden with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department who patrols rural Wood County east of Dallas and has investigated about 30 tournament fraud cases in his nearly 13 years with the agency, including one that spanned nearly two years involving a contestant who submitted a dead fish.
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Why the Euro bailout just won’t work
AMBROSE Evans Pritchard over at the Telegraph has a great little piece about why the basic method being used in the eurozone bailout just won’t work. It’s here and is probably really for geeks and wonks. But to simplify the argument…..
OK, so if you try to cut government spending in order to close the deficit then there’s going to be some shrinkage of the economy. Partly because Keynes said so, partly because of the way that we calculate GDP itself (government spending is a part of GDP so if we shrink it then GDP shrinks). The big question is well, how much? If cutting government spending by 1% cuts GDP by 0.5% then it all might be very painful but it will work in the end. You’ll be able to close that deficit.
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The stupidity of new banking regulations
IT’S said of Generals that they’re always ready to fight the last war. That they would have been just perfect at fighting WWI in 1939, that in 1914 they knew just how the Crimean War should have been done. But at least they did actually work out how to deal with the last one: this is more than can be said for the people trying to reform banking right now.
European banks will be forced to split out risky business such as proprietary trading under proposals set out in a report on how to make the region’s lenders safer.
The report produced by a European Union advisory group, chaired by Bank of Finland Governor Erkki Liikanen, recommends a series of changes to the way banks are structured and funded to make it easier for them to be wound down if they get into trouble.
Under the proposals, proprietary trading, which involves banks attempting to profit from trading using their own shareholders’ funds, will in future have to be placed within a separate legal vehicle to ensure that it poses no risk to a lender’s deposit-taking business.
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Is it necessary to be dim to write on feminism for the Guardian?
WE’VE another of those interminable pieces about how there just aren’t that many women in the tech industry. The actual reason goes entirely unmentioned: which is that, on average, men and women are different.
Simon Baron Cohen has proven this quite conclusively. In The Guardian itself no less. Programming and tinkering with engineering stuff requires a certain cast of mind if it is to be done successfully. This particular type of mind is more common in men than it is in women.
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Guardian get 50 loons to explain climate change
TO celebrate the fact that we’ve only got 50 months to save Gaia from being boiled as we sleep in our beds The Guardian has invited 50 extremist nutters serious thinkers to contribute their view of what must be changed. So that we don’t boil Gaia.
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Posted: 1st, October 2012 | In: Money | Comment (1)
Why are they being so stupid about minimum pricing for booze?
I’VE been saying, as have many others, for years now that this idea of minimum pricing for booze just won’t work. For it’s illegal under EU law:
David Cameron’s plans to introduce minimum prices for alcohol to tackle Britain’s binge drinking culture have been left in tatters by a legal threat from Brussels.
The European Commission has challenged Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond’s law which imposes a price hike on booze – a plan which Mr Cameron hoped to follow in England and Wales.
Officials in Brussels told Scottish ministers they had to withdraw legislation to impose a 50p-per-unit price on alcohol because it was ‘not compatible’ with the EU Treaty.
This just isn’t a surprise at all, anyone at all who has looked at the idea has come up with exactly the same answer. You’re not allowed to do this. There’s even case law on it, concerning Greece and tobacco pricing.
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Posted: 28th, September 2012 | In: Money, The Consumer | Comment
The real problem in Spain is the provincial governments
WE’VE a very interesting little stand off developing in Spain. It’s just all rather more complicated that it at first seems.
OK, so we know that the country can’t afford to pay 6% or more on its borrowings forever. It will go bust if it does that. We also know that it needs to recapitalise the banks. Which means borrowing more money: see the above problem.
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Why we don’t want a mansion tax
SIMON Jenkins manages to get it right today. Which is a real surprise for something about tax in The Guardian.
This Lib Dem idea of a mansion tax is simply stupid. You’d need to set up an entirely new tax collection system, you’d have to have a valuation of all the expensive houses, it would be a very expensive method of collecting not very much tax revenue.
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Posted: 26th, September 2012 | In: Money | Comment (1)
Kieran Allen writes the world’s most loaded resignation letter
THIS is how you resign:
From: Kieran Allen
Sent: 25 September 2012 08:11
To: MEC London UK All Staff
Subject: LeavingHello ****,
It feels quite strange to be writing my leaving speech after 2 1/2 yrs. of loyal service to the company. It’s the longest I have spent at a company and I owe MEC a lot for my training and development. I leave in a position where I can go and further my career in digital if I so wish and for that I pay *** great tribute.
However I leave with a horrible taste in my mouth after my working life for the past 8months has been ruined by ***** ******.
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Posted: 26th, September 2012 | In: Money | Comments (8)
No, living in Bexhill does not make you live longer
NO Living in Bexhill does not make you live longer. It just seems that way, har har.
In fact, people who live in Bexhill On Sea do seem to live a long time.
Now that reputation has been borne out by official figures, after the first detailed analysis of last year’s census showed that the Sussex resort has more centenarians per head of population than anywhere else in the country
According to a breakdown of returns published yesterday, there are 66 people over the age of 100 in the borough of Rother, which centres on Bexhill.
A further 1,722 residents are in their 90s, with almost 7,000 in their 80s out of a total population of 90,600.
Remarkably, the second and third highest concentrations of centenarians are in neighbouring Worthing and Eastbourne while the Arun area of Sussex also makes it into the top 10 alongside the Scilly Isles, Torbay and Bouremouth.
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Posted: 25th, September 2012 | In: Money | Comment (1)
Black tie activists crash HMRC boss Dave Hartnett’s retirement do (video)
BLACK tie activists crash HMRC boss’ retirement do. Dave Hartnett, for it is he, takes the interruption pretty well. He might even be smiling at one point. Gratifyingly for the protestors, the man to his side chips in and calls them “scum” – “You’re trespassing scum. Go.” No, he never did call them plebs, more’s the pity…
There’s science, bad science and then there’s the gays and drugs story
THE Daily Mail tells us that the gays are taking more drugs than the rest of us:
Gay people are seven times more likely to take illegal drugs than the general population, a new study conducted over two years has found. And one in five show signs of dependency on drugs or alcohol. The report, conducted by the Lesbian and Gay Foundation (LGF) and the University of Central Lancashire, sampled more than 4,000 people over two years.
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Posted: 24th, September 2012 | In: Key Posts, Money | Comment
Why that GM gives everyone cancer paper is rubbish
SO, yesterday I pointed out that no scientists worth their salt were prepared to back the research paper that claimed that GM corn produces cancer in lab rats.
Given that the “research” was very shoddily done by a known crank on the subject, one who had already been told off for his “research methods” this isn’t all that much of a surprise.
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Posted: 23rd, September 2012 | In: Money, The Consumer | Comment
GM foods will give huge great horrible breast cancers
GM foods give you breast cancer. That’s the takeaway message from a new scientific paper just released. That GM corn from Monsanto and the Roundup herbicide that it is meant to be resistant to will kill us all in our beds by giving us breast and liver cancers. Oh, and rot our pituitary glands. Expect to see this paper accepted as gospel truth by every environmentalist on the planet for the next few years.
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Posted: 20th, September 2012 | In: Money, The Consumer | Comment
Why George Osborne is screwing with updating benefits
WHY is George Osborne screwing with your benefits? Because he can, basically. But the how is more interesting:
If the move is implemented, many benefits would be frozen for two years, then rising only in line with average pay.
Leave aside the freeze for a moment. Concentrate on the average pay instead. The “only” part.
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Posted: 19th, September 2012 | In: Money, Politicians | Comments (2)
Should female doctors get paid less than male ones?
SHOULD female doctors get paid less than male ones? No, this isn;’t some tired variation on the standard patriarchal nonsense. It’s actually quite an important question. You see, many female doctors, many more than male, go part time for some portion of their career. This has possible implications for how they should be paid. Dr Andrew Goddard, the Royal College of Physicians’ director of medical workforce, said:
“We know that 38 per cent of female consultants work part-time compared to 5 per cent of male consultant physicians.
The numbers for GPS are even higher.
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Posted: 18th, September 2012 | In: Money | Comments (3)
The oil sands that are destroying Canada – well, it’s not so bad
WE hear often enough that the oil sands extraction plants in Canada are destroying vast areas of the countryside. The usual shout is that they’re destroying an area the size of Wales (something which usually has us English wondering whether they wouldn’t like to come and deal with the real thing).
You may or may not be surprised to find out that there’s ever so little, just a tad, a touch, of hysteria about this. A spot of exaggeration you might say even. Here’s a little report of a trip up there to see the oil sands projects. Note picture 8: that’s the one after all the devastation that’s done by the mining.
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Posted: 17th, September 2012 | In: Money | Comments (3)
Valencia school offers course in prostitution
TO Valencia, where students at Trabajo Ya!can, for a fee of €100, undergo a one-week “basic course in professional prostitution with maximum discretion”. Men and women lean how to use sex toys properly, what positions are best and the Karma Sutra.
Not everyone likes it. In May, the Valencian regional government’s Department of Justice and Social Welfare got all legal, claiming that school broke the lay by encouraging prostitution.
The matter reached court. The government lost.
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Posted: 15th, September 2012 | In: Money, The Consumer | Comment
Punishing the Bankers: Peter Cummings punished for making loans – oh the irony
OOOOH, the irony, it’s just too exquisite.
So we’ve finally actually punished a banker for the mess that they created. Peter Cummings from HBOS:
Peter Cummings, the HBOS banker whose division lent billions of pounds to property developers, has been given a lifetime ban by the Financial Services Authority for his role in the banking crisis.
Cummings, who has also been fined £500,000, is the only former HBOS banker to be penalised by the City regulator as a result of the near-collapse of the bank which was rescued by Lloyds in September 2008 – and the highest profile banker to be punished since the financial crisis.
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Reducing Union Power Increases The Workers’ Wages
THIS might come as something of a surprise but reducing the power of unions can indeed raise the workers’ wages. This isn’t the point that Hopi Sen was intending to make here at all but it is indeed a useful interpretation of the facts.
This seems to suggest that over the last decade and a half, non-union members have seen a greater proportional increase in their income which has eroded the wage premium enjoyed by union members in both the public and private sectors.
The explanation of this is that there are two possible models about what unions do for wages.
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A small note for idiots everywhere on commodities
WE’VE been told, again and again, by the likes of the World Development Movement, Oxfam, Action Aid and all the rest, that more speculation in commodities leads to higher prices for commodities.
It’s the weight of money argument: more money being played with then obviously prices must go up.
Of course, every economist who has actually looked at the question has insisted they’re spouting garbage. More speculation can mean higher, lower or the same prices: depends which way people are betting, not how much is being bet.
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