A.S.H. are C.U.N.T.S

I’m a smoker. I enjoy smoking. I am also addicted to smoking, something I realise every time I break off from work to trudge outside into the rain for a puff. I’ve also had a coupla years postgraduate training in social science research methods at a leading European institution, but even without that I could still rip ASH’s report on “The economic cost of tobacco in Scotland” to shreds, then wipe my shitty arse on it in an environmentally friendly, recycling styley. In fact, the only thing interesting about the ASH report is what it says about the emerging common-sense now breaking out like a pustular rash across the public sphere.

But, I digress, the ASH report is fucking shite. Notice the choice of title for starters, it’s not just cost, it’s “economic” cost, woooo, cos economists are good at understanding things aren’t they, like I dunno, the credit crunch? Alternatively, its a spurious rhetorical flourish invoked from the outset to tart up a piece of shit exercise in vested interest, cockamammie pseudo scientific spleen venting wank.

That aside, the big problem people who make a living moaning about smoking have is the brute fact that taxes on fags are so high they generate more in revenue than it costs to treat the consequences. End of, or at least it was in Scotland until this report came along to state that smoking generates £940m in fag taxes, but actually costs the economy £1.1bn.

This magic £1.1bn is primarily made up of £271m in treating smoking attributable diseases and £692m in productivity losses (the remaining costs being relative fag ends by comparison. Boom boom).

Starting with the £271m, this is pretty incontrovertible I guess except people tend to die of something and incur costs in the process. Oh and then there’s the rapid growth seen over the last few decades in the old-old population, you know they old-old feckers that are  used to justify fucking everyone else’s pension cos its too expensive. And yet at the same time as everyone else’s (including my) pension is getting the big, hard wahoo, they old-old feckers remain subject to the exponential likelihood of lovely things like dementia, which in turn require care and as a result incur costs. But, that’s OK cos as the ASH report’s authors’ blandly state “in the absence of Scottish lifetime care cost studies, the perspective adopted for this report will not examine differences in end-of-life care costs,” i.e. they refuse to compare the cost of say treating a smoker who dies at 70 with lung cancer with the cost of a non-smoker who dies saturated in pools of his incontinent piss in a state funded care home at 95 having thought his name was Molly for the last ten years of his life throughout all of which he claimed a state pension. So in a report that claims to be cautious, conservative etc., anything likely to get in the way of their argument/prejudice gets discounted, which is a bit of a shame I guess.

Actually hang on a mo, given the kerfuffle over unfunded public sector pensions, shouldn’t we all encourage public sector workers to start smoking 20 a day once they hit 45 to reduce the fiscal deficit? I mean think about it, that would both increase the tax take and shorten life-spans in ways that'd ease the pension deficit etc.,

Anyhoo back to ASH and productivity, which is the trump card they’re trying to play; ASH rightly highlight how smoking varies with socio-economic class, in fact they go so far as to state “Smoking is also strongly patterned by deprivation; 43% of adults in the most deprived 10% of areas smoke compared with only 9% in the least deprived 10% of areas, resulting in marked inequalities in smoking-related disease and mortality”. Fair play to them given that presents taxes on fags as a tax on the poor, except I don’t think that’s what they mean or realise the implications of what they’re actually saying, which is the deprived i.e. in many cases the unemployed, are disproportionately more likely on a systematic basis to smoke fags i.e. people who are unproductive in an “economic” sense.

This is a shame because the subsequent references to extrapolating from one or two studies on the effects smoking has on productivity make no reference to this systematic bias. I think this is a bit of an oopsy in a Scottish context, but, hey ho there is a reference to some bod who studied 200 Scottish working people a few years back when more people smoked, which is nice I guess except that’s not a representative sample in anyone’s fucking book. More importantly the £244m estimate used seems (it’s not clear) to be based on the additional time spent away from work by smokers. Except, to give a personal example, I work more than my contracted hours most days of the week, most weeks of the year; smoking enables me to do that, so on a net basis? No fucking loss. However, the authors also state “It should be noted that, amongst smokers, there may be positive effects on performance associated with smoking breaks …. e.g. improved concentration or reduction in perceived stress versus withdrawal symptoms caused by nicotine abstinence). However as studies to date have not included such variables it has not been possible to estimate any impact this may have.” So there you are then, the potential positives aren’t taken into account.

More fucking generally, going by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, “rest breaks helps workers to be more relaxed and calm on the job and helps to enhance productivity and leave the workers more physically and mentally refreshed” i.e. fag breaks can be a clear positive.

Actually, am getting bored with this now cos it’s so fucking shite. It’s like oohh, oooh, they know what fungibility is so if you were to point out smoking generates lovely income tax, national insurance and corporation tax from the people and businesses engaged in making, selling, wholesaling and transporting fags, which they haven’t taken into account, they would then wank on about how smokers would spend the money on something else anyhow and ignore the fucking obvious points like chances are it wouldn’t be made in Britain if it was and chances are it’d generate less fucking tax revenue regardless. It’s just fucking shite really, the kinda shite a real study would show was toss because on a net basis taking direct and indirect costs and benefits fully into account it would be totally clear smoking is an “economic” positive.

So nah, while the fact one of the people who reviewed a draft was an advisor to the Policy Exchange i.e. one of the Tories favourite think tanks, may have given me the willies, the real meat of this report, because of what it exemplifies, is the fact it uses a spurious cost saving argument given all that says about how we’ve moved into an age of austerity wherein if the rhetoric ain’t about cutting costs and/or public sector spending it ain't about jack-shit. More positively, looking at page 13 of their latest annual report the vast majority of ASH’s funding is from the public sector, so hopefully the ignorant fuckers will get the big wahoo next time they go sniffing round for taxpayer's fivers to piss away on shite.

Nov 15th P.S. My personal experience of Brian Monteith, the former Tory MSP, is limited to my having been unfortunate enough to find myself in a rather good French restaurant at the same time as he was engaged in a very LOUD conversation with Michael Fry, who the Guardian describes as a former Tory. The food was good, as always, but due to noises in the background conversation was impossible. To suddenly discover upon reading this today that we’re both critical of the ASH “research” for many of the same reasons gives me even more reason to hate ASH.

Mebbe there’s a libertarian argument to make about it all with ASH a state funded bunch of fannies desperate to impinge on adults exercising their right to choose, mebbe there’s no. Or mebbe ASH illustrates how the therapeutic state (a posh post-modern alternative to the nanny state term of abuse) is as guilty of as many sins as big business what with its lobbying, its self-serving research and its vested interests and as such should be treated with as much disdain and cynicism. Or mebbe it’s simply my view that the rhetoric and approach ASH chose to use is an example of how in this age of austerity, arguing for cuts has become the new common sense. I don’t know. All I know is that ASH are a bunch of bastards that have left me feeling as soiled as a non-smoker’s clothes after spending a day in a room full of 40 a day addicts. Ignorant cunts.

Down with this sort of thing Pt II

The Vodafone protest is the best protest of the decade. End of.

1) It has a nice, clear, recognisable well-defined target - Vodafone
2) It has a nice, clear, easy to understand and readily achieveable objective – getting Vodafone to pay up what’s claimed to be its real £6bn tax bill
3) It is neatly linked into the current political-economic situation – Vodafone paying this supposed tax bill will reduce the pressure to cut public spending
4) It has a clear and motivational moral imperative – fairness
5) It has potentially much broader ramifications such as the tax law surrounding all this and associated processes would be/are open to potential scrutiny, other companies may be reassessed, the links between big PLCs and the political process/politicians (e.g. the anti-file sharing legislation rushed thru parliament shortly after Peter Mandelson met David Geffen in Corfu), etc.,

Because of all this it won’t get the same coverage as say the US Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear and will probably fade away quite soon. This is for various reasons including it’s too practical and dull, it cuts through the political process and associated media superstructure, there's no need for any self-serving pseudo-psephological “analysis”, it lacks any ultimately dumb big ideals for liberals to cheer about and there are no headline grabbing personalities involved either. Plus Vodafone's corporate communications department will be working their guts out to kill the story.

Ideally, what's needed is for Simon Cowell to get involved on the protestors behalf, mebbe even Jordan or worse case scenario the percussionist from Radiohead, anyone but Billy Bragg basically. Except they won’t.

Nov 5th P.S. - seeing as its Guy Fawkes night and all that says about burning effigies and bastards more generally it was interesting to listen to the ace File on 4 programme about tax dodging PLCs, which made specific reference to Vodafone stating "Vodafone agreed a £1.2 billion tax settlement for Luxembourg
and related tax disputes dating back fifteen years. That’s a lot of money but it’s a billion pounds less than Vodafone had provided for in its accounts", that provision signalling the potential bill could have been higher than what was eventually paid if not quite £6bn or whatever. Of course prudence (for which read caution) would dictate sticking a big number in the accounts, so the £1bn extra is no more than indicative, but even so.

Was also interesting to read about people being done by police for protesting outside a Vodafone shop in Brighton on the grounds that their refusal to leave constituted a threat to "public disorder and intimidation", i.e. they were presumably successfully stopping people buying mobile phones from Vodafone.

So a big PLC would seem to have successfully bilked us all out of however many millions of pounds and in return taxpayer funded police arrest taxpayers for complaining about it?


Dec 9th P.S. Brilliant!!!!!!! I was totally wrong. So sure on Saturday there the BBC didn't even name the "organisation" behind it in its initial reports about the latest Vodafone protests, but allova sudden what's now called UK Uncut is actually gathering a head of steam, geting some rather lovely attention on radio 4's today programme and there's a new mass protest planned for Dec 18th. Last shopping day before Christmas and sales are going to be blocked at arcadia and vodafone stores. Utterly, utterly brilliant and the best political development of the decade.

Evil croissants

The quango cull reminded me of croissants, that and the limitations of democracy as practised in Britain. Listening to Francis Maude pretend it was about re-establishing democratic accountability in Britain this morning on radio 4 as opposed to the cutting out wasteful inefficiency it was originally presented as I thought what a fanny. Besides the obvious realisation by the ConDems that they ain’t gonna save much money there’s the self-inflicted wounds it inflicts; politics is oiled by patronage, quangos or at least a seat on the board of a quango and the associated however many grand a year dished out for spending a coupla hours a month pontificating gave politicians a fabulous resource with which to reward friends and neighbours. Cull too many quangos and all that patronage gravy goes bye bye.

‘fessing up to that would allow politicians to claim they were above board, on the level and all that kinda jazz, except doing so would be to admit the role patronage plays in the political process, which they won’t. So instead it looks like a stupid mistake unless of course the transfer of responsibilities to organisations for which politicians have direct responsibility is actually going to happen and make a difference, which brings us back to croissants.

One day one of the major supermarket chains conducted an experiment. They did some nice straight forward labelling, which assigned traffic light ratings to the contents of different types of croissant. Sales of the croissant that had lots of red lights on it fell. Sales of the croissant with more green and amber traffic lights increased. The end. Except it wasn’t, the supermarkets subsequently campaigned vigorously against the Food Standards Agency (a different FSA) making the traffic lighting of food according to its sugar, fat, salt content etc., a legal obligation. The supermarkets won so instead we have all this shite about RDAs and this and that and what not i.e. an overly complicated system no one really understands or can be arsed with so largely ignores.

This is a bad thing. Pleb morons don’t care cos they believe they have the right to eat shite food. Middle income liberals are too busy wanking over farmer’s market organic cheese to notice while fat, fat fatties have glandular issues and big bones that mean they have to eat hunners of choccie biccies and avoid any exercise. But, on balance and on average, a straightforward traffic light system would probably see some incremental shifts in what people eat and put pressure on supermarkets to tell the manufacturers that supply them to change their contents in favour of less obesity inducing stuff. Except, that would cost money and possibly sales, hence their vigorous and successful opposition to the FSA’s efforts and the associated constraints this indicates big business lobbying places on the democratic process as practised in Britain with public health being sacrificed to private profits.

So now that another FSA is being “substantially reformed” will we see a more independent approach being taken by government to the issue of food content labelling? It’d be good if we did and it’s a nice litmus test as to the benefits of the quango cull that’s in keeping with Francis Maude’s claims. In the meantime the soon to be defunct Government Hospitality Advisory Committee on the purchase of Wines sounds like the best quango to be a part of ever, I can even think of a fabulous person who should have a seat on its board.

Tit and Tory boy pt.II

When your boss has to go and defend what you’ve done you know you’ve fucked up big time, so it’s fun hearing and watching David Cameron trying to smooth things over by wanking on about the need for tough and difficult and tough and fair and difficult and tough decisions. But, WOW what a fuck up the child benefit thingy is.

Aside from the tough/difficult rhetoric, the main response I’ve heard concerned an appeal to practical snobbery – basing it on household rather than individual incomes would involve a horrendous bureaucratic process (true) and also involve means testing. Now its fun to hear a politician say "means testing" in this age of the “targeted” benefit, but isn’t that kinda what the family and working tax credit processes already involve?

I’d have thought an easier approach, a pragmatic one even would have been to automatically exclude all those on £44k+, but allow them to submit a claim if their total household income was below a certain level; that way the rank unfairness of the current proposals wherein households with an income in excess of £80k can get a benefit households with a £44k income can’t would be addressed. Plus, as benefits not paid to auld yins prove, there will always be penty of people who don't claim.

But, WOW what a political fuck-up all the same given the Tory fascination with the nuclear family and notions of mums staying at home to raise the kids, but getting the shafteroo cos hubby is a middle manager in a PLC. And WOW 2x given the Tory desire to appeal to the aspirational i.e. those who don’t earn £44k but aspire to and can see themselves doing so. And WOW 3x given the stupid fucks forgot about the origins of child benefit, which is that it was to provide a universal income to mothers, i.e. one devoid of the stigma attached to nearly all other benefits and grounded as much in feminist as it was statist thinking.

The backtracking going on right now about transferable married people’s allowances (noises rather than commitments) is amazing also given cutting one benefit, but increasing an allowance would limit any net benefit in terms of deficit reduction. But, that’s a tad to sensible, rather the Beeb will simply fixate on any notion of backtracking followed by a wank off over personalities cos that’s how politics and the economy are reported on here.

Which is a pity given this deficit is a finite thing isn’t it, like the Tories are taking all these tough/difficult decisions to address a one off problem whereas presumably the child benefit cut will be a permanent measure? How that work?

Perhaps on the basis that it plays straight into the US Democrat rhetoric Labour are currently wrapping themselves in of the squeezed middling sort, providing a wonderfully practical example of how the current cabinet of toffs just doesn’t get it.

Tits and Tory Boy

I could be a tit and quote myself from May this year so I will “it seems like middle income bods are gonnae get clobbered left, right and centre by various VAT,NI and income tax rises and freezes and also get excluded from as many benefits as possible e.g. no more from tax credits or nursery vouchers and say the end of unverisal child benefit and what not if household income is over 40 grand a year or something, the staggered introduction of all which will progressively knock thousands off people's disposable incomes and further ghetto-ise the benefit system”.

But, aside from my having crystal balls (it was bloody obvious), what's really, and I mean REALLY impressive is how dumb the child benefit proposals are. So that’s no child benefits for any family with at least one person earning over £44k? Seems fair enough I guess, except looking thru the following hypothetical households:

Single parent earns £44k, total household income, £44k = No benefit
Two parents: he earns £43k, she earns £43k, total household income £86k = Gets benefit
Two parents: he earns £44k, she earns £15k, total household income £59k = No benefit.

So it targets higher earners not higher income households, which doesn’t strike me as being especially fair (whether the legislation will be smart enough to pick up on same sex couples will be interesting also). And oh oh, I was a schmuck on the grounds I didn't think anyone was dumb enough to conflate individual earners with households.

Then there are the raw disincentives to work it creates. In this blessed age of flexible working a bog standard two income family debate is whether someone should cut their hours to spend more time with the kids. Whereas the economics of this originally took into account the earnings forgone vs child minding costs saved, now they will increasingly need to take into account the £1,752 p.a. in benefits foregone also.

To give a practical example if Mum A on £45k p.a. dropped to a four day week, her net salary after tax and national insurance would fall from £32,860 to £26,764, however, she would keep her child benefit and potentially save c.£1k p.a. on child care costs.

And yeah, yeah, pension contributions would also fall 20%, but so feckin what given pensions are going to be raped on a continuous basis for the next decade. I mean what’s 20% less of fuck all tomorrow compared to getting 20% of your working week back today? The other funny besides stuff like people losing out when they get a promotion and/or pay rise is the potential damage it’ll do to the tax take.

So whereas Mum A on £45k for a 5 day week coughs up £12,139 p.a. in tax and NI. Mum A working 4 days only pays £9,235 p.a. and keeps her £1,752 p.a. in benefit. So a measure intended to save £1,752 a head ends up costing £4,656, which kinda matters given it indicates only a significant minority of people need to follow Mum A’s lead for the fiscal benefits to be neutralised. Eligibility needs to be tapered or banded in some way. End of.

You could at this point be cynical and suggest that actually it’s all about reworking the relationship between the state and the citizen and weening more and more people off what had deliberately become a near-universal system. Except, that’s a pile of shite because means testing household rather than individual incomes would be both a fairer and more effective means of doing so. It also implies a greater degree of vision on the part of the government than they appear to possess. I originally thought poor Danny Alexander was wheeled round the TV studios a while back to ensure the LibDems got all the stick for Tory decisions. Rather than any Machiavellian shenanigans I’d now say the more likely explanation is George Osborne really is the fuckwit “flat tax”(??@*&?!?) Tory Boy shit stain he always came across as before the election, that and he probably wears purple buckets for a bra.

Green Diamond

Howard Davies is the kind of smart Adair Turner gets presented as by people who rub themselves against the latter in the hope some of his apparent credibility rubs off. Both were/are also FSA chairmen, but only Howard’s recent writing is worth much reading. This includes an essay last month on why the moves to reform the financial system are running into the sand, which matters given the rationale for reform was to prevent a reoccurrence of the kind of thing that has already put millions of people on the dole.

This and the increasingly aggressive push by the banking industry to be left the fuck alone provide the context for today’s announcements about two bankers getting new jobs. The one that got all the headlines, commentary, analysis, pish spoken, etc., involved Barclay’s bank, which will be headed up next year by a very, very rich bloke as opposed to the current very rich bloke. The one that was actually significant though was the announcement that the chairman of HSBC will become a government trade minister in January next year. Not that the attention paid to the former in any way obscured the latter or that there was any coincidence involved in the timing of the announcements. No chance.

Regardless of that its nice to know that as the government is considering reregulating banking and even has a nice commission considering breaking banks up the chairman of a bank that recently threatened to leave Britain if this was to occur will be in government. It leaves you feeling all warm and moist knowing they’re in the tent pissing out, not pissing in. Or perhaps it’s simply taking the piss.

Speaking of which, arse. No idea how to add a graph showing how the % of long-term unemployed has risen from c.1 in 4 to c.1 in 3.

Also piss is all this BBC malarky about the spending cuts/review given what was going to happen was already apparent before the election during which it was allowed to fall between the cracks in favour of the usual personality wankfest. Presumably the temptation to do vox pop/speak your brains specials has just got too damn much. The other point of course is that the spending cuts will be over a number of years and not really kick in until 2011 - i.e. the BBC will get bored with it a day or two after the spending review is announced on October 20th (having already nagged ministers every morning on Radio 4 in the run up to the announcement) and the human misery they actually cause will no longer be headlines when the misery actually starts getting caused (by then my guess is they'll be wanking on about the coalition breaking up in between over-reacting to some disease that might just wipe out Western civilization).

P.S. read an intersting article today (8th), which mentioned Barclays told Downing street in advance about the very, very, very, very rich man's impending appointment, exactly the kind of info that would enable those so motivated to make sure the other appointment was announced at the same time and buried as a result.

Graphtastic

Woo hoo a graph! A shit looking one to be sure, but still it tells a story even if it’s not one with an especially happy ending.

The background here is that unemployment rose sharply throughout 2008 before stabilising at the beginning of 2009 where it has largely remained since. Positively, the employment rate has recently ticked up signalling the worst of the credit crunch is behind us, which is all fine and rather dandy until you look at the actual composition of the unemployed population in a shit graph like the one what I’ve done here. There what you see is that while the unemployment rate may have plateaued, within this long-term unemployment (defined as greater than 12 months), has continued to increase relative to the total. To put it another way from 2008 Q2 to 2010 Q2 the number of people unemployed for over 2 years increased by 63% while the number unemployed for 12 months plus increase by 104% which is an even more fucking horrendous number.

To quote an Office for National Statistics review of employment statistics long-term unemployment is more likely among older men, those with fewer qualifications and the disabled. A different way of putting this is that the growing number of poor sods signing on for the 53rd or more time this fortnight have endured and are enduring an increasingly nightmare uphill struggle when it comes to getting a job. Sure, things are getting better, but why exactly would an employer take on an unskilled, disabled, middle-aged bod who hasn’t got out of bed before 8am for 2 years when there’s some able-bodied graduate just come to the end of a temporary contract and desperate for beer tokens knocking at his door? The answer is he won’t and we’ll see a permanent (over the medium-term i.e. 5 years) increase in the number of long-term unemployed.

At a high falutin economic policy level, the resultant increase in “structural unemployment” will probably see the NAIRU revised upwards in due course and nuanced references to why unemployment in excess of say 6% can be compatible with supply-side constraints and in no way a reason not raise interest rates. It’ll also see some Daily Mail led splenetics about dole scroungers and benefit fraud being trotted out every time government benefit spending figures get published.

Alternatively, given the human misery involved, I’d like to see the next few Office for National Statistics labour market statistics bulletins printed out and publically rammed down the throats of the few dozen or so vile British financial cunts who contributed to and profited from the credit crunch; it’s not as if it wouldn’t be a piece of piss to start naming names, especially given ignorance is rarely an acceptable excuse.