Last year, for the first time, sales of adult diapers in Japan exceeded those for babies.
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Any statutory regulations/provisions against the press in the UK will most gleefully be lapped up here for use against the local media. The one argument we have had; that the modern liberal democracies around the world have self-regulation rather than statutory laws for the media will fall down should the UK opt to embrace statutory legislation as well to police the press. Such moves will only strengthen the hand of oppressive, regressive governments around the English-speaking world. – Sinha Ratnatunga, Editor, Sunday Times, Sri Lanka November 25th, 2012 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
 German asparagus in season. Heaven. – Michael Portillo samples the cuisine of Germany in his latest European Railway Journey. I am greatly enjoying this show, and am recording it. I am finding it to be a wonderfully relaxing and entertaining way to soak up a mass of historic trivia, such as (this week – just as one for-instance) how Eau de Cologne got started. I also learned about that upside down railway that I have seen so many pictures of but have never pinned down to a particular place. And not so trivia, because Portillo is focussing particularly on the period just before World War 1. Europe’s last golden age, in other words. Railways were not just for tourists, they were for This week, Portillo was wearing a rather spectacular pink jacket, of a sort that he would never have risked when being a politician. November 22nd, 2012 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
I never argue. It’s other people who argue with me. – Roger Hewland, proprietor of Gramex, Lower Marsh, London. Overheard by me, this afternoon. November 21st, 2012 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Many people are ignorant of many things. This is not surprising and entirely forgivable, given how much knowledge there is to be had, and how much of it is highly specialized. What is less forgivable is how people feel free to spout off and propose things without the slightest idea of the complexities they are dealing with. The French revolutionaries blithely imagined they could create a whole new society with its own rules, just by thinking it up. They ended with a bloodbath in a pigsty. November 19th, 2012 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. – via Bernard Goldberg November 16th, 2012 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Nobody pretends that hiking these taxes means “ordinary people” will have less tax to pay. But most folk still believe that companies can be made to pay taxes, shifting the burden away from the rest of us. I have news for you: they can’t. Corporations are artificial legal constructs: only people can ever pay taxes. The burden of taxes supposedly levied on companies is borne either by investors (through reduced returns on their capital), workers (via lower wages) or consumers (as a result of higher prices). Targeting firms is just a way of stealthily taxing these people, ensuring nobody really understands who is picking up the bill. It is because we’ve forgotten about these basic principles that we’ve ended up with a dysfunctional and incomprehensible tax system, as exemplified by the row over the practices of Starbucks, Amazon, Google and others.” Allister Heath. (Non-UK residents who don’t subscribe may not be able to see the full Telegraph article, but it seems that quite a lot can, so I am putting this up with a disclaimer.) November 14th, 2012 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
“If you think that Westminster exists in a bubble, you should try Brussels. For the 18th successive year, the auditors have failed to approve the EU’s accounts. Meanwhile, the EU wants much more money.” – Roger Bootle. He is writing in the Daily Telegraph, but given that the DT now imposes a paywall on non-UK readers, I am not going to bother with the link. November 12th, 2012 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
A Guardian blog commentator attacks the free-market right thus:
It won’t fit on a T-shirt, but maybe “verminous, parasitic , parvenu, lickspittle, non empathetic sociopathic trash” would. November 9th, 2012 | 42 comments - (Comments are closed)
So the cure for the looming ‘fiscal cliff’ will be – surprise! massive income tax increases (expiration of the “Bush tax cuts”) plus significant additional income taxes) and no cuts in spending what-so-ever. Oh, sure, they’ll eliminate the mohair price support program, and close a post office or two – reducing spending by 0.00000126% – and this will be presented as brutal, inhumane cuts to the very fabric of our society. But the Federal juggernaut will continue unabated. – Commenter llamas (oopse, sorry) November 9th, 2012 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
Big state cronyism is a bad thing, economically, socially and ethically but it is not Soviet Communism. Get a grip, people. Nor is it possible for a big, strong and basically rich country to be destroyed and annihilated by one bad Administration though it is very bad. No country gets annihilated just like that. Heck, even Belgium cannot destroy itself. – Helen Szamuely Nor is it the case that the American people, as this bizarre Economist blog claims, “endorsed macroeconomics”. They just voted very marginally for known dull over unknown boring, neither of whom would have enough power to implement a root-and-branch plan of reform. That is presumably why neither man had much of a plan to do so. Drift continues, roughly in the same direction. November 8th, 2012 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Republican party fucked this up all by themselves – they could have made clear points to rebut the arguments that led my family members to making rational decisions to vote Obama. But they didn’t. How hard would it have been to say “OK, we all know that entitlement spending is unsustainable. We also know that whole generations have made retirement plans that depend upon those entitlements. So we’ll guarantee to maintain them for anybody over (whatever age) but things must change for people who are younger.” How hard would it have been to say “Abortion is a divisive issue, but the law is settled. America faces far more pressing challenges, right now, so I pledge not to mess with abortion – there are more immediate matters that demand my attention.” Apparently, it was too hard. That’s what happens when a political party becomes nothing more than a cynical, office seeking, machine. It tries to pander to too many special interests and ends up satisfying none sufficiently – Commenter ‘The Other Rob‘, discussing why the Stupid Party (USA branch) lost to the Evil Party (USA branch) November 7th, 2012 | 50 comments - (Comments are closed)
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