Nigella is Back!!! But where's Nigella

Nigella Lawson has returned to our screens with Nigella Express. But who's replaced to coquettish Nigella with a smug mum. No surprise that she shops in Waitrose though. And who serves one poussin a person. Just get a chicken.

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Tories can't win here - but where's that?

I've just received my September issues of the Steatham Brixton & Clapham News. Life without it is hardly worth living.

The big news is that the Conservatives cannot win here! But where is here. Supposedly, votes last time, was 38% to Labour, 35% to Lib Dems and 15% to the Tories. But, the article does not say what votes these are. The two obvious one would be the last general election (Lab 47%, Lib Dems 28% and Tories 18%) or the last council election (Lab 40%, Lib Dems 29% and Tories 19%). But it isn't. So where is this mythical place?

PS - The Lib Dems think that the Tories should dump David Cameron because of their poor poll rating. Have that looked at how well the Ming has done!!

Springwatch returns

Springwatch returns to the BBC. I've been waiting since autumn for it to come back to our screens. Now I can watch the tumbles of barn owl, the stubbornness of a set of badgers, and the daft flirting and courtship rituals of the presenters Bill Oddie and Kate Humble. It also allows me to discuss Kate's great tits with my wife.

Lambeth's green wrapped money grab

I have just received by first letter from Lambeth Council since the present lot got voted back into power last year. And it should not be too much of a surprise, it will cost me money. The Labour councillors have decided to double the cost of parking permits.



Now, a tax rise of around £50 is probably a fairly modest tax rise. I am sure their next council tax increases will be bigger. But what is particularly objectionable is that they have tried to spin it as a environmentally-friendly policy. To quote their letter:

This policy is designed to persuade people to limit non-essential car use, and to encourage people to think how much cars pollute when they come to change their vehicle

There is no chance that this policy will achieve these stated objectives. Lambeth's tax is levied on car ownership, not use. Once someone has decided that they need a car, they will pay the same amount irrespective of whether they drive five miles a week or five hundred. There is no new incentive to limit non-essential car use. And while Lambeth will tax cars with larger engine sizes more, the extra is trival. Parking permits will cost £80 more for the largest cars, a bit more a full tank of petrol. Compared to how much more it costs to buy and run these cars, £80 a year will make no difference to people's decisions.



The main reason for Lambeth to increase the cost of parking permits is to raise cash. Yes, there are restrictions about where the council can use this cash, and the Lambeth will be investing the money into road safety schemes. But such hypothecation is also just a useful piece of PR which are easy to get round. The council can just reduce or slow the growth of funding for these safety schemes from central funds, and divert the savings for their own pet projects.

How the police are the biggest drugs cartel

In its first annual report, the Serious Organised Crime Agency trumpeted the seizure of 74 tonnes of cocaine. It reckons that this hefty amount is about a fifth of Europe's supply, worth £3 billion on the street. Though street values are always difficult to estimate, SOCA suggests that the seizures certainty cost the criminals who owned them at least £125 million. These figures are wrong. And it's not wrong, as in the price of cocaine is not posted in the Financial Times, so a precise estimate is difficult. Its wrong as in the seizures have probably made the the drug traffickers money.

The reason the SOAC figures are wrong is that they considered only the 74 tonnes they got hold of. They didn't think about the 300 tonnes left behind which is now worth more. Like any other good, with less cocaine on the market its price will increase. So, even as the drug lords suffer losses as some of their merchandise taken, they gain as what remains goes up in price. Research suggests that for every 10% reduction in supply, the price of cocaine increases by 12%. Therefore, the best guest is that the seizures of 20% of the European supply will have benefited the criminals by £25m.

So why, if all that drug traffickers need to do toincrease their
profits is to reduce their supply, don't they do it themselves. Because
they are not, whatever they may call themselves, cartels.
If one supplier reduced the cocaine he sells, there's nothing to stop
another stepping in to fill the gap. But the police, by seizing a chunk
of the market, effectively enforce a partial cartel.

Seizing drugs makes no economic difference to the narcotics industry. Not unless you seize so much that their consumers can't afford the inflated prices. To do that you would need to seize more than half the supply, and that does not seem likely. Of course, that doesn't mean that taking 74 tonnes of cocaine out of circulation is a bad thing. There will be less of the stuff to go around. But whatever sums of money are banded around by the police or the media, it's never going to be unprofitable to met a demand for an illicit drug.

Try again

After about a year of doing nothing with this blog, I have now hope to be somewhat more committed to this blog, especially if Lambeth Council provoke me enough.

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The BBC News Online ran an article this week about the sale of counterfeit football shirts and the efforts of Umbro to stop it. It followed the courageous work of George, an undercover Umbro investigator, to stop this despicable trade. To be honest George, I hope they pay to a lot for this work, because you cannot be doing it for the good of society. If there ever was anything approaching a victimless crime, counterfeiting England shirts must be close.

Umbro paid The English Football Association £180 million for the exclusive right to produce the latest English strip. This exclusivity is allegedly being undermined by the counterfeiter, who obviously paid the FA sweet FA. The BBC reports that between 9 in 10, and 1 in 30 shirts sold in the UK are counterfeit. Now, this particular statistic should tip people off to the quality of the article. The BBC is effectively saying that counterfeit sales make up between between 3% and 90% of total sales. As counterfeit sales must be between 0% and 100%, the BBC isn't really sticking its neck out with its own estimates.

But, beyond the BBC's precision, and back to the counterfeiters craven theft of Umbro's valuable exclusive rights to the English strip. But who loses?

Umbro share holders? Umbro's accounts report that it made £24.6m in 2004 on an investment of around £70m; a reasonable return. And I'm sure that they paid their £180m with a fairly good idea of the scale of the counterfeiting industry.

The FA? With the obscene riches in football today, £180m is just pocket change. What possible good could the FA do with the money. Give it to the footballers, their agents, or the rest of the huge gravy train. Most people probably think they footballers salaries should be cut by half. I'm sure that £50,000 a week should be enough to get most of them out of their beds to play for 90 minutes once a week. If the FA needs some more money, levy the clubs.

The public? Counterfeiters give the ordinary fans the ability to keep up with the ever changing on-field fashions of heros without bankcrupting themselves.

What all these monopolists seem not to remember, copying isn't theft. Their ability to carry on making English shirts haven't been taken away - intellectual property cannot be taken away. Governments have just created this sort of property, as they have judged that in many cases society is better off if copying is controlled. And in many cases, they're right, such as drugs and the latest Dan Brown novel. But in this case, I can see no such benefit.

Now Umbro might want to carry on employing George. Its their profit he's helping to support. But please BBC, can be have a better crime to expose.