Who knew? But at least we now have evidence. Apparently German Railways have stated: 52 million of the tickets have been sold, with one in ten buyers ditching at least one of their daily auto [ie car] trips. Additionally: Germany’s three-month experiment with super-cheap public transport reduced carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to powering about 350,000… Read more
Category:
Economics
Economics Theory
The failed state that is now Britain
Nothing that is government controlled or supervised now works properly or even at all. As Michael Gove puts it “Government is simply not functioning.” I learnt at school (all credit I think, to a fairly well-working history teacher) that the minimum requirements for a functioning state are defence and justice. We have since now learnt… Read more
The Failure of the ‘Charity Model’
Rees Mogg famously said that he found foodbanks ‘uplifting’. I suppose it is when you think Samuel Smiles comprises the most up to date of reading and you admire the doctrine of self help and despise government help, even when you are part of that government, that you find the impoverishment of others ‘uplifting’… It… Read more
Further comment on the Maitlis lecture
Rather than just highlighting the summaries of the Maitlis lecture, I’ve now actually watched it on youtube. Whilst she has interesting things to say, what strikes me above all is the poverty of ambition. Now I think most of us are guilty of this – we are usually intellectually suppressed by the need to earn… Read more
Public Health – another problem of capitalism
All health is actually public by definition – unless you believe there are simply no communicable diseases. Which idea surely at the very minimum, the Covid pandemic has scuppered. So individualism cannot be any real solution. A couple of weeks or so ago (I’m nothing if not up to date) there was an interesting FT… Read more
Amazon not so fresh with the UK
It looks rather as though Amazon Fresh is struggling to break into the UK market. According to the Sunday Times it has halted the expansion of its stores Apparently (but unsurprisingly): sales at most of the stores had fallen short of expectations and that the fit-out costs are multiple times higher than with a standard… Read more
Saturday’s ‘brain candy’
Apparently inflation is such that we now have food banks for pets. That is why I have titled the piece ‘Brain Candy’ (which sounds like an American expression but seems to be Canadian, in fact) but it is of importance simply because the UK is in such a parlous state that even its alleged ‘man’s… Read more
The Doctor shortage is by design
James Cleverly is Education Minister. Britain has a widely publicised shortage of GPs and doctors in hospitals. Yet the number of places at UK medical schools are capped – in England this year there are 7,500 places. In 2020 and 2021 the government lifted the cap on numbers, which last year led to more than… Read more
250 million years and then somehow best before…
Amid all the disastrous food inflation news, I did enjoy this twitter post: Lovely that 250 million years expired sometime in 2019! But joking apart, because the container is clearly plastic, the suppliers should, I think, have suggested instead a transfer to a more inert glass container as soon as practicable after purchase. I surmise… Read more
Food inflation runs riot
According to this article in National Retail the National Farmers Union (NFU) have stated that there is: At least £20m worth of fruit and vegetables were wasted in the first half of this year because there weren’t enough workers to pick the crops… This at a time when Ukraine is unable to supply much of… Read more