Shop sales 'worst for 15 years'
So is the
headline on this BBC piece.
Have a guess if that's true or not? That's right, it's not. In fact shop sales were the
best since records began.
The article itself is more accurate, it's the 'worst growth' for 15 years. But let's put this into perspective, the rate of growth was 1.2% (like-for-like was a fall of 0.9%, but that's irrelevant in a macro sense). I don't have the figures to hand, but if GDP in January (which would have to be estimated) was 1.2% higher than in January 2009 it would be a pretty good result. And in a recession partly caused by overstretched household budgets!!
Labels: economics, Statistics
The Tories and the deficit
The Tories seem to have got themselves into a muddle here. As far as I can see the problem is that they want to cut the size of the state, and yet everyone who knows anything about it is telling them that to do so significantly early on would send the economy back into recession.
There seems to me two coherent ways out of this). One, they could cut government spending by (say) equivalent of 2-3% of GDP (or 1% or 5% of whatever they want) in their first budget, and cut taxes by the same amount. This would leave the deficit unchanged but meet their objectives of reducing the size of the state. Or two, they could keep spending and taxation the same, but alter its composition. This would be to reduce spending on things that are ongoing, i.e. salaries, and increase it on things that can be reduced more easily; this might be direct consumption spending but in practice I think it'd be easier to do transfer payments. So sack X% of the public sector workforce or scrap Trident and give every citizen a one-off £500 (or whatever is is). This would keep the deficit the same and the 'size of the state' but make it easier to cut in future.
I'm not saying these policies would be better than the current policy or easy to implement, but I think it would show an understanding that the deficit and the size of the state are related but distinct things.
Labels: deficit
Marr
I think this site has led the way in being critical of Andrew Marr over the years, from the embarrassing time when he pretended to be his children's pet guinea pig, the arrogant and silly questioning of Gordon Brown, and of course the thing we're not allowed to mention.
Having said that I am enjoying his TV series on British history, which I saw for the first time tonight. I'm alarmed at his appearance though.
Labels: Marr
Razor blades
I'm reading
Short List magazine and there's an advert for Gillette Fusion Power, a newish razor. It has the strapline:
"You wouldn't drive on worn tyres. So why shave with blunt blades"
Well perhaps for the simple reason that a set of worn tyres might kill you, but a blunt blade won't? Or simply that new car tyres don't cost about ten times the cost of the car and don't wear out in about a week.?
Labels: First sign of madness
Chess computers
Kasparov on computers, humans and
chess.
Labels: sport
More on marriage
Matthew d'Ancona in the Evening Standard notes that those deriding the £20/week marriage bonus proposed by some Tories (IDS's lot):
...forget how poor the poor truly are: the least affluent 10% have a disposable income of less than £90/week. So for them an additional £20/week would be no small windfall.
But can this be true? The IDS proposal is a transferable personal allowance. So the receiver gains 20% on just over £5k a year, which works out at £10/week. However to gain this surely you need to earn two personal allowances - more than £200/week.
Labels: Taxation
Really, Nick?
Nick Cohen in today's Observer:
they ought to know that you never level an accusation you can't substantiate because you make life too easy for your targets when you do.
Is he taking the
piss?? His attack (naturally retracted a few weeks later) on Nick Davies is only the most recent example of his own form here.
Labels: Nick Cohen
"Yo! Blair"
David Aaronovitch
ticks people off for still believing Bush said "Yo Blair" not "Yeah Blair". But is it so straightforward?
Wikipedia sits on the fence, but Aaro's certainty presumably comes from this
John Rentoul post, based on this S
imon Hoggart piece.
The sound clip Hoggart plays is hard to get to load as its Real Player, but it's the same one as heard here at
18 seconds. It's pretty clearly "Yeah Blair, what are you doing". But there's the problem with this cliip - the
transcript was "Yo Blair, HOW are you doing". "How" and "what" are not hard to distinguish, and as clip never goes past the "doing" bit, I don't see any proof that its the same clip.
Labels: things that seem to matter
World's highest BASE jump
Has been
made off that tall building in Dubai.
Isn't this a bit like the world's tallest dwarf and the world's shortest giant? Or the hottest winter?
Labels: world records
Cameron
What is all this non-tie wearing? My local Conservative candidate is also doing it on his posters dotted all around the area. With Cameron its how I imagine he dresses when on holiday.
