This blog is proudly produced

from a spare bedroom in Central Scotland.

Yes, I would expect you to "worry about money most of the time".

So, the Beeb has yet another article about some people being relatively poor. And it has two poster children. The second is a recent graduate working for the NHS but that complaint is all mixed in with racism, sexism and other whataboutery.

I want you to have a think about Pippa.

Pippa:

• Has or, at least had, mental health problems.
• Which caused her to drop out of school - presumably with GCSE level qualifications although it doesn't say.
• Quickly became a single mother (no mention of daddy - he must exist but ...)
• Was homeless (no mention of parents, other relations, and not much, even, of friends.)
• Is in education (not working) - albeit an "access to higher education" course because, remember, she dropped out of school. 
• Is just 21.

Considering all the above, would we expect Pippa to be in a high or low earning segment of society? And, given the costs of supporting a young child (it's been a while for me but I can remember babies not being cheap things to have around), she's going to have relatively high outgoings.

Frankly, barring generous support from the Bank of (the not mentioned) Mum and Dad, this is the sort of person who, in all bar the most utopian society, we would expect to be actually poor.

And in the UK, she is poor. She's not starving, she's not homeless, she's trying to improve her prospects, baby Violet looks reasonably healthy. So, yes, I think this is a reasonable success for the safety net of the UK benefits system - a system I regularly criticise for it's lack of responsiveness (and, yes, she was in hostel accom or with friends for a while while pregnant and shortly after giving birth. But a council flat was found.)

Just as a note, at 21, I was earning about half of the UK average (mean, I think, the source site doesn't say. Fine as a single bloke ...)

Unsympathetic Advertising

Via Farnsworth M Muldoon on David Thompson's site, I was alerted to this entertaining piece of karma. I explored further to some of the mashups on the Daily Wire. But what finally made it for me was the advert presented at the bottom. Ouch ...

It's not real socialism ...

According to Craig Murray, who seems to have gone completely off the deep end since I last read any of his stuff.

Apparently, Venezuela, even though they call it 'Bolivarian Socialism' themselves, is apparently 'revolutionary millenarianism'.

As in:

The problem with revolutionary millenarianism is that its failure to achieve utopia is viewed as disaster by its proponents.

Personally, I think the population of Venezuela are possibly less concerned about the lack of utopia than they are about the lack of food, medicine and even toilet paper. But then Craig has pretty much always been one of the nomenklatura. They seem to survive regardless.

I would note that I agree with him entirely that Venezuela is more of a functioning democracy that Saudi Arabia, which is a non-constitutional monarchy and makes no claims to democracy, functional or otherwise. Yet, broadly, manages to feed its people. And on the few occasions I have visited, didn't seem to have a grotesque toilet paper shortage.

Can we spot the bait and switch here?

Guardian headline, reported on the Today programme:

European diplomats based in the UK say the British government is stepping back from its threat to leave the EU without a trade deal if negotiations break down.

In private, say diplomats, UK officials recognise the “havoc” that this would cause, and have come to regret the threat to turn the UK into a deregulated offshore tax haven, implicit in Theresa May’s Lancaster House speech in January, when she warned that “no deal for Britain is better than a bad deal”.

They claim the conciliatory signals from UK government officials are an attempt to lower the temperature as the prime minister prepares to send the UK’s article 50 letter on Wednesday, triggering the start of two years of intensive Brexit negotiations.

I would suggest people carefully note the differences between the Prime Minister, pragmatic but a Remainer at heart; Her Majesty's Government, committed to implementing the outcome of the referendum; and "UK officials" who, as with much of the metropolitan class are shocked and ashamed by the evil, low information BREXITers winning.

I could indulge my cynicism further but it should be fairly obvious where I stand.

Also, I would note the pathetic whining about a "deregulated offshore tax haven". WTO rules for trade with the EU do not mean, implicitly or explicitly, a deregulated tax haven. We are, of course, offshore.

Not that being a deregulated tax haven would be a bad thing. It might get Richard Murphy out of the country for one.

Light slowly dawns?

Well, it is almost the equinox :)

Something has obviously been added to the water* at the SNP Conference:

He said: “There’s obviously a very sophisticated intelligence network that exists currently as part of the UK and it would make no sense to tear all that down. Once Scotland is an independent country we are going to cooperate extremely closely with our immediate neighbour.

Well, replace "intelligence" with "economic" and that's the whole SNP ideology (except the "evil English oppressing us whenever we couldn't find any Scots or French to do it) down the loo with the rest of the excretia.

As a note, why should RUK co-operate with an untrustworthy socialist pro-EU neighbour? "5 and one squinty one Eyes"?

* It's Trump, that evil SNP appointed Ambassador for Scotland, in control of MI6, I tell you.

I'm shocked, I tell you, schocked!

How dare intelligence agencies gather intelligence!

BBC:

Wikileaks has published details of what it says are wide-ranging hacking tools used by the CIA.

The alleged cyber-weapons are said to include malware that targets Windows, Android, iOS, OSX and Linux computers as well as internet routers.

Err, well, yes?

Seriously, what do you expect them to be doing? Spending their time finding faster ways to crack Engima?

Those income requirements for spousal visas ...

This is something I feel quite strongly about, my daughter having married an American and having had to wait to bring him across. The principle, I agree with the Supreme Court, of not requiring HM's Government to import people who will be dependent on benefits (outside of our obligations to refugees and asylum seekers, who ought not to but seem quite often to be economic migrants), is reasonable.

The BBC, as always, with its full SJW hat on, gets it badly wrong:

Satbir Singh is a British citizen who is unable to bring his wife to the UK from India, because his more than £60,000 a year income comes from more than one source.

I went through this with daughter. She had income from three sources - her part time job, research assistant work at her University, and research assistant work with our company. The big question was whether she would build up enough income from her three jobs, or eventually reach the full income requirement from her university job.

Here are the rules. And remember this guy is on £60k per year, according to the BBC - more than three times the current £18,600 requirement.

Category A - if any of his sources of income is a job that pays £18,600 or more a year, salaried or not, he can apply to bring his wife over after 6 months in the role (lowest salary in the period counts, non-salaried get it slightly easier and it is total gross income over that 6 months.) And you can add non-employment income, a savings contribution or pensions.

Category B - (and the example c in the rules is a good one) - this is how my lass qualified in the end.

Part 1: Gross up your employment over the last 6 months and do you exceed £18,600 annual equivalent? If you are salaried, you can use your current salary rate. If you are non-salaried or have multiple earnings, do some trivial arithmetic.

Part 2: Did you earn more that £18,600 over the last 12 months?

Pass both parts and you can apply. And you can count your partner's income (if they are in the UK with permission to work) and, as above, non-employment income and pensions count for both parts and a savings contribution can be used for Part 1 but not Part 2.)

So, I reckon somebody on £60,000 p.a., an average £5k per month, would be trivially able to meet category B after about 3 months and 22 days, before adjusting for lumpiness of income?  That would be enough time to earn £18,666.67 - covering you for both Parts 1 and 2 of Category B.

There are various adjustments, to the benefit of the applicant, for sick leave (and maternity, paternity, adoption and parental leave) and other categories, C through G, for different circumstances.

I call "Bollocks" on the particular instance (rather than that there are specific people who have particular issues with the system.) Unless, of course, his income is undeclared - but that's his problem, not HMG's.

He hit him with the cluebat!

Somehow, I've got on to the "Medium" daily mailing list. Quite a lot of it is just the usual pathetic SJW whining with a strong levening of "This shit is only relevant to Yanks. And, even there, it is probably still wrong."

But this cracked me up:

Though the vaunted Free Market has no incentives to, say, take care of babies with cancer, a well-functioning market can definitely be a great way to see which provider offers the cheapest price for a roll of toilet paper or a bushel of apples.

Sighs.

It is fairly obvious that there are:

• people with babies with cancer, 
• and their Friends and Relations, 
• people who have had babies survive cancer, 
• people who have had babies die from cancer, 
• people who have other tragedies to do with cancer, 
• medics who care about babies, 
• medics who are just doing their job, 
• medical researchers who want fame and fortune

All of these people have things to contribute to taking care of babies with cancer - money, insurance providers with money, time, skills, tear-jerking stories that can get in to the press and raise awareness.

How best can they co-operate to ensure that these resources are brought to bear to provide the most effective treatment or palliative care for babies with cancer? Well, medicine is a not-really-but Free Market - loads of guild controls, loads of government interference - some of it justified, much of it less so - but there is no reason that paediatric cancer treatment should be any different to, say, adult cancer treatment. Or hip replacements, frankly.

Luckily for my still-too-high blood pressure, at the bottom, this was linked:

Are you really going to indirectly compare “babies with cancer” and “getting a ride?”

If anyone was wondering why the endlessly breathless hipster-press gets the stink-eye, I think I can hook you up.

Okay, timeout.

When you open your article — when the lead paragraph — is patent bullshit, you significantly undercut your credibility.

“Though the vaunted free market has no incentives to, say, take care of babies with cancer.”

You mean, aside from all those people who care about babies with cancer?

Well worth reading the response in full (much more than the OP.)

Now, of course, that the cluebat has struck home, let's see if it has any lasting impact.

British Values?

So Jeremy Corbyn thinks that John Bercow is right to reflect "British values" in signalling that the Trumpocalypse will stop at the gates of the Palace of Westminster.

I wonder if these values are the murderous homophobia and anti-semitism and the legalised misogyny that he loves so much in his friends from Hamas and Hezbollah, or the torture and murder practiced so freely by his friends in the IRA?

BBC goes Daily Mail

Roman houses found under park in Chichester:

"It is thought the houses, which would have been worth millions today, were owned by people of importance."

A quick skeg at Zoopla suggests that they are probably wrong.