The stupidest thing I've heard all year ...

And it has been an exemplar year for idiots and their utterances: 

Elf on the Shelf is easily the most violently dreadful thing to happen in 2016.

FFS. You've had Aleppo, a regular if discontinuous series of Islamist murders, Daesh / ISIS / who cares, Trump, anti-Trump riots and Jessica effing-Valenti,  and people are worried about a bloody doll?

Well, okay, not "people". Guardian commentators**. If I got an invite to their New Year bash, and unlikely amounts of weaponry*, there might just be a violently beautiful thing happening on the cusp between 2016 and 2017.

* Well, and a morality bypass. Which sufficient gin might just enable.

** Who can't use Amazon. Apparently EoS costs £31.95. Without looking hard, I can get that down to £4.44. Which takes it from the "this seems unreasonably expensive" to "the sort of cheap tat that kids can be bought without thinking about it too much***."

*** From an unreasonably okay-ish professional pov. I appreciate that four quid is quite a lot of money for some people. 2/3rds of a bottle of Buckie, for a start.

Notes: Mind you, he's not the only one who doesn't like EoS:

Another graph for Tim W

Apropos of this discussion, here is a graph of annual incomes for the 25th and 50th percentiles of British (GB) households. These are "before housing costs" and in 2013-14 "prices" (so I'm assuming normalised to 2013-14 Pounds).

Some Musings on Tax

So, pace a discussion chez Timmy, a couple of graphs. Firstly, the distribution of UK after tax income in 2013-14:

Tax Year 2013-14, UK Govt Figures

At Richard's request, the same distribution for tax year 1999-2000:

Tax Year 1999-2000, UK Govt Figures

Then we have the %age change (NB: all positive), for each centile, in after tax income between tax years 1999-00 and 2013-14:

%age increase in income 2000-2014

Note that the above chart isn't corrected for inflation or anything else - raw figures from the data published here, as of the 1 Mar 2016 update. But Bank of England inflation figures state that inflation 2000 to 2014 was 50% (suspicious but true - check yourself) so, for clarity, the inflation adjusted graph is here:

Inflation Adjusted %age increase in UK after tax income, 2000-2014

The BBC - They hate Britain, don't they?

From here:

Argentine forces landed on the Falklands on 2 April 1982 to stake a territorial claim, but by 14 June they had been ejected by a British military task force

In non-BBC speak:

Argentinian forces invaded the Falkland Islands on 2 April 1982 but by 14 June they had been defeated by a British military task force.

Also, I'd note that I technically agree with Fallon that Corbyn is a bigger threat to the Falklands than Argentina, but that is a comment on the current (and changeable) military capabilities of the UK and the detached and local Falkland Islands forces versus the current Argentinian capability, as opposed to the understandable views of the un-named, by the BBC, "chairman" of the Falkland Islands Legislative Assembly. Un-named, possibly, because there is no such role? They may mean the Speaker, Keith Biles, who chairs the Assembly.