Friday 29 June 2018

New Zeitgeist: a Fusing of C@W Themes

A propos of our last two C@W posts - CU's on Mrs May having been led by her civil servants to the Magic NHS-Money Tree, and mine on the Swansea Lagoon decision, a neat coming-together of these two themes emerges in the columns and letters pages of the Telegraph and Welsh media passim.
Tory anger as clean energy project shelved (!)
... roars the DTel (paywall), and its corresondents provide the proof.  Welsh Tories were also dead keen on it too, in large numbers.  Yes, there are no end of self-identifying Tories who think the Lagoon to be deserving of public largesse.  What, at any price?  Electricity costing four or five times the going rate?  Apparently, yes.

It even looks like the old Tory logo ...
It would seem, then, that T.May is not merely lame and lazy, she's discovered that the Money Tree is popular across the board!  If she'd only realised this last week instead of pussy-footing around with just the NHS, the lagoon would have been saved.  Can the Defence-Money Tree be far away? 

A whole *moneytree* policy, no less!   (Sorry, must be the sun - pass me another drink.)

Nice weekends all round - 

ND

15 comments:

Electro-Kevin said...

Nice weekend to you too.

The pressure from leftists is relentless, especially the BBC which has been going the whole hog on NHS (aka Labour) propaganda and greenism. They have a firm grip on all of our institutions.

If a thing doesn't make economic sense then it doesn't make sense at all but the Tories are being crushed by agitprop and Ingsoc in waiting.

Even our celebrity business leaders (Branson and Sugar) are raving lefties.

Thud said...

If we could just give that money tree one last vigorous shake all our problems would be solved....honest.

Anonymous said...

A government can print money if it wants to -- it's only numbers on a spreadsheet.

The problem is always that loose money leads to inflation. A government has to decide how much money it can create without inflation going too high. For some reason 2% per annum seems to be considered OK.

The danger of inflation is that there is positive feedback, and it can easily go completely out of control, as in Zimbabwe a few years ago or Venezuela. Shake the money tree too vigorously, and you end up paying a million pounds for a cup of coffee.

Don Cox

Sebastian Weetabix said...

Branson isn’t a leftie. He just knows which tit to squeeze for money to go into his gaping narcissistic maw.

andrew said...


The full zeitgeist to me is closer to being

its ok to be wilfully ignorant. you can still lead and failure is someone elses fault.

- colleagues at work unable to solve a problem because they just wont look at the problem
- loss of understanding of how business works (guido's re-printed letter in the sat FT and this has been stated before too) in government and no particular will to learn (f*** business)
- fox news
- homeopathy / mmr vaccine
- T Blair / Iraq - I believed what I was saying (thats the problem)

K said...

@andrew

Re the FT letter on Guido today that's full of errors too. The author seems to misunderstand that VAT isn't charged on B2B transactions within the EU.

My guess is when he looks at the VAT returns created by his accountants he sees the big number in "EC Acquisitions" and thinks that's tax paid even though you immediately claim it back under the Reverse Charge scheme so there is no actual affect.

BUT...

The reason the EU has you file this crap even though no tax is actually paid is so they can gather statistics about the internal market and locate tax dodgers. This is why I keep saying that there is just as much paperwork required for trade within the EU as without. Also note how the author brings up Inward Processing Relief which I mentioned in a comment about two weeks back as well (basically it means that a lot of customs clearance doesn't actually happen at the border but at authorised warehouses further down the supply chain).

I'd say the author has been given good advice but made some errors when trying to repeat the advice to the FT. However he doesn't mention non-tariff barriers which could greatly affect some sectors.

Electro-Kevin said...

Sebastion Wheetabix

Branson knows to sqeeze the LEFT tit.

He wants to legalise cannabis.

A) Because he likes a toke

B) Because he'll scam the NHS just as he did the railways.

Will he allow his airline pilots and train drivers to smoke it in their days off ?

A) Network Rail nor CAA will allow it (for bloody good reason)

B) Passengers will switch to other carriers (for bloody good reason)

The war on drugs is not lost. The vast majority do not use them. Branson still thinks it's a good idea.

This capitalist is proof that capitalism is not all good.

Anonymous said...

"The war on drugs is not lost. The vast majority do not use them."

You would be hard pushed to find people who don't use caffeine, alcohol or nicotine. Most would be Mormons.

Don Cox

andrew said...

Everything is a drug by someone's standards.
Helps if you regulate the ones that tend to negatively affect you and those around you.
Perhaps we should ban people getting too much exercize - all thisd endorphins can cause you to sprain a muscle...
(No i do not think that).

Raedwald said...

"Virgin Pot" - will it be offered in traditional Imperial 1/16ths or metric 2 gram packets for the student market?

We retro oldies who haven't smoked a spliffy for 30 years or more and don't have to drive or operate machinery for the weekend (except placing the tone arm on a new LP every 20 minutes) could well be a Branson market. As long as he offers the old nostalgic giggly altruistic stuff rather than the nihilistic ethnic 'skunk' that makes people stick knives into eachother.

Anonymous said...

@EK - the war on drugs may not be lost, but the battle against cannabis certainly is, as battles go we're talking Siege of Kut territory.

It's openly smoked on the streets, criminalisation has led to it being sold to children, becoming a gateway drug as dealers hand out free samples of more addictive drugs to hook users, driven a market for ever stronger variants, led to the likes of Spice - which was an issue when legal and is now a full blown problem after being made illegal.

I'm no military strategist, but I'm confident handing your enemy a list of victories and gifting them territory is unlikely to regarded as conducive to winning.

As for the NHS I am, surprisingly enough for someone who prefers low taxes, happy to pay more. With caveats.

The NHS wants more cash? Fine, we, the taxpayers, want more transparency, more auditing, less arse-covering, less gagging clauses and consequences for failure.

Everyone makes mistakes. Medical professionals are human beings and, yes, they'll fuck up. That doesn't mean you employ all available resources to dodge responsibility. You recognise the error, you compensate those effected and you look at how you can stop a repeat. Not some mealy mouthed "lessons learned" statement when you're finally caught out.

The NHS is pretty decent, and whilst the UK medical market could do with looking at the Singaporean model a bit more, for me the main issue is how sainted it has become.

It's a service. Some parts are good, some are crap, and not everyone working in it is an "angel." Why is this so hard for the various luvvies (who probably go private) to comprehend?

rwendland said...

Don't the Welsh Tories have to back the lagoon as they promised it in their 2015 manifesto:

"As part of our long-term economic plan for the whole of Wales we will continue to support growth opportunities right across our nation, including the ... the Tidal Lagoon project in Swansea" (page 13)

Though this Cameron money-tree promise was left out of the 2017 manifesto, only saying nebulously "We will ensure industry and businesses have access to reliable, cheap and clean power. ... We want to see a diverse range of sources for Britain’s energy production".

Nick Drew said...

They certainly gave foolishly favourable name-checks to the wretched thing, but there was no commitment IIRC

trouble with the lagoon is, the promoter led everyone to believe whatever they wanted to (and the Tory manifesto wasn't far behind in playing the same game)

E-K said...

War on cannabis is lost.

Rot.

It has a pngent odour and you'd be smelling it literally everywhere. You don't and where you do it shocks.

It is illegal and arrestable to be intoxicated by alcohol in a public place.

The legal purpose of alcohol is not intoxication - it is taste.

The only purpose of cannabis is intoxication.

If it is legalised then it must be taxed to buggery. Then the current legalisers will bootleg and murder as now.

Users will have to burgle morr to pay the tax.

Branson wants a contract to supply it on the NHS paid by you and me.

Dutch cafe culture ? Like 25 hr drinking and crack cocaine gambling ?

E-K said...

Meant to say current DEALERS will bootleg and then murder as they do now.