Friday
Jun152012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Black's latest
Tim Worstall has read Richard Black's latest outpourings and is agreeably rude about the great man's failure to grasp even basic concepts in economics.
I find it astonishing that it is considered acceptable for our national broadcaster to publish such semi-educated burblings.
Reader Comments (61)
Point of order!
f******ts is incorrectly spelled, it should be f*****ts, tsk tsk.
I have to be honest and say that I found TW's post belly laughing funny in the same way that I found John Clease funny in Fawlty Towers.
Visions of Clease goose stepping around the restaurant wyhen I read "No, you Godawfully ignorant tosspot. Your complaint is that GDP is not a balance sheet of any kind at all: it is purely and solely a P&L". I had to leave the room and try to recover my composure hehe
apologies and hiding head in shame: John Cleese
Maybe OT, but parking tickets are increasingly a tax in the sense of being an unavoidable cost of doing buisness, if that buisness involves maintenance or repair work on premises in many of our towns and cities, as it is simply illegal to park anywhere near them for long enough to do any substancial job.
OT but why not. The last shower of F******ts introduced all sorts of insidious taxes dressed up as fines. Fail to deliever your company accounts on time - £100 fine. And it is absolute. Proof of posting will not do. Proof of receipt is required. The cynic in me believes that there is someone employed at Companies House whose sole job is to lose every 92nd set of accounts sent for filing and to hit the kerching keys on the cash register.
I also received out of the blue a penalty notice from the oiks who levy the congestion charge or some such bollox in London. I looked in vain for the box on the form to tick which said you dumb f**ks you have made a mistake the car in question was in the garage having a new diff fitted. Guilty until you prove yourself innocent.
And dont get me started on HMRC and their penalties. Alright, just one little story. Some years ago HMRC introduced stamp duty land tax to replace what we all loving knew as stamp duty and which strangely enough we still call the new tax. SDLT is payable on property sales. Overnight and with little or no thought HMRC went from a reporting system that required about 10 pieces of data to one that required potentially hundreds. HMRC were ill prepared and it became apparent that the staff that had to deal with enquiries from irate members of the public - mostly the legal profession - were completely demoralised.
Like all tax systems the SDLT system involves penalties for late filing. If you file on time but incorrectly that is also late filing. At £100 a throw this is a nice little earner for HMRC. In the early days when no-one knew what they were doing HMRC did not enforce the penalties but as time went by this became and as far as I am aware still is pretty much an absolute penalty.
Of course HMRC themselves make mistakes which can cause the legal practitioner additional work so you might imagine they have a reverse penalty system to cover theirt f**k ups. You would be wrong. The only way for a lawyer to get compensation from HMRC is for the lawyer to send a bill to his client, get the client to pay the bill and then send the receipted bill to HMRC and then pursue the claim for compensation. I can tell you that means in practice the chances of getting compensation from HMRC are about as good as Tim Worstall being the next pope. I think that gets us back on topic?
good night
I trust the pedant who was whining about whether or not the TV licence fee is or is not a tax, is convinced by the parliamentary report on the review of the BBC charter here
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldbbc/128/12805.htm
which noted, amongst other things that:
"Since our last report there has been a significant change in the position of the licence fee. In January 2006 the Office of National Statistics re-classified the licence fee as a tax. Previously, this payment had been classified in the National Accounts as a service charge. Explaining the change the Office of National Statistics (ONS) says "in line with the definition of a tax, the licence fee is a compulsory payment which is not paid solely for access to BBC services… A licence is required to receive ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, satellite, cable""
Geoff Chambers @ 9.50am: sitting out here in the once and should be still Dutch East Indies, I thought this was the Comment of the Day. You made an old man chuckle, tx
Good swearing is an art form.
It makes you laugh when it is done well, and, in moderation, can be very therapeutic. I felt much better after reading Tim Worstall's blog. Refreshed and fortified for the endurance that will be needed long after the hot air balloons get back from Rio.
To business. I am still surprised by the increasingly transparent political economics that gets put on the BBC "Science and Environment" pages [or should I say “Environment and science” pages?]
Science should not be forcibly paired with 'Environment' in the first place. Science is a process, a way of thinking, a means to an end. At the BBC 'Environment' IS the end, and it has already been decided. Some of it I may even agree with, but it should not be in the science section. It is preaching politics and economics from under the umbrella of science.
if the BBC writes "Science and Environment" they agree on the fact that Environment <> Science. Just as well, Health News are somewhere else, lest quackery be confused for "Science".
If you want to be taken seriously you shouldn't swear, says Don Keiller and others. What a f**ck*** load of boll***s. We are at a stage in our society where pretty much all we have left, apart from riots and killing politicians, is the right to use the centuries old language given to us to express our disdain. Honestly, those of you who are too civilised or too sophisticated to allow anyone to swear as a means to emphasise or highlight the points they want to make should stfu.
It is people like you who ensure that we wil never ever be listened to. Swear away, I say. Here in the lovely EU we are witnessing these ridiculous swaps of money between banks and nations that do nothing but steal our wealth. The elite are robbing us blind, day in, day out. And Keliier thinks wse shouldnt swear. What a twat.
The Bish said it was "agreeaby rude" so its official! tee hee